


You Take It With You

by lazy_daze



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-11
Updated: 2008-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:17:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazy_daze/pseuds/lazy_daze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam saves the world, and he brings Dean back from a month in Hell, but that's when things start to get complicated. Dean's cheated death before, but this time, it's different – Dean's spirit is unable to re-enter his body. Can Sam and Bobby work out how to reunite Dean's body and spirit? And how will Dean cope if they can't? From hunts in the Chicago lakes to visits to the Grand Canyon, with dreams, handjobs and hookers along the way, Sam and Dean ride it out and learn all over again how to live this life and live it together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Technically I should warn for character (sort-of-not-really)death, as the point of this fic from pretty much the beginning is Dean-as-a-disembodied-spirit, but I promise it's not just an excuse for unrelenting angst. Promise! Also some sort-of Sam/OFC. And kinky disembodied sex moves. Go go ghost!Dean. Spoilers through s3.
> 
> Thanks so so much to oxoniensis for invaluable audiencing and encouraging and summary help, hee, to a_fallen_sister for the awesome bits of local Baton Rouge info, to meret for the lovely artwork, and as always to the fantastic balefully for the absolutely fabulous beta. ♥!!!
> 
> Written for the incredibly brilliant spn_j2_bigbang challenge. Huge kudos to the mods; thanks for running such an awesome challenge so smoothly!!
> 
>  **Link to art** : <http://meret.livejournal.com/738175.html>

Lilith's a little girl again, but a different body, and it makes Sam's stomach roil to think maybe she destroyed the previous body beyond even demonic repair. This girl's cute as a button, glossy black curls and blank white eyes that make Sam want to squirm, wash his hands, brush down his clothes to get rid of the sickening sense of _wrong_ ; like looking down at your food and seeing it crawling with maggots after you've already taken a bite.

"Changing your tune a little, aren't you? From wanting to take me down," he says, and his heart beats fast in his chest. This is the crunch time, make-it-or-break-it, and it has to work, because he can't do this anymore, not alone.

She giggles and curtseys, smile as sweet as the bright summer sunshine around them. Sam breathes hard though his nose, half expecting the air to stink of rotting things, but it's light, flowers and grass. The whole setting is idyllic, the sort of place more suited to a romantic picnic than the end of the world. They're somewhere in the middle of acres of rolling meadows, standing on top of a gently sloping hill: a green rise overlooks the land, soft line of trees along the horizon, the morning sun gentle. Sam looks away from her, can't stand those eyes, gazes up into the impossible wide sky, pale blue miles above him.

"Sa-am," she chides with a vile sing-song lilt, "pay attention. You know I'm right, so just say it." He looks back, clenches his jaw.

He forces a smile. "Rivals joining forces, it's not a new idea. What makes you think I want that?"

She laughs, light. "Because this is your destiny, Sam, and you'll get killed ignoring it, but you're not as up to shouldering it all on your lonesome as your yellow-eyed friend seemed to think. You do remember what I promised you if you'd agree," she says, blinking her wide, innocent-looking eyes as the white recedes, leaving gentle brown. "I swear it will feel good to let all that angst about saving the world go. You're headed for way better things." She tangles her fingers shyly in the lace cuff of her dress. "You just need to let it in."

So he does. He's felt a wall pressing in on him more and more this past year, and he just lets it fall: opens his mind and relaxes, _goes_ , gives in to it, that weight of expectation, of his fate.

Accepting it is the key, as it turns out. He feels power fill him up like a dam's busted out the second he gives in to his so-called destiny, letting it surround him, saying _yes yes yes_ to the switches that flip in his head. It's just like Ava said, except all at once, power rising up in him and cresting. He staggers a little.

He feels strength and energy thrum through him, wants to _act_ , to scream and hurt and break, to use his mind and his body to wreak havoc. His eyes fill out, dark red film that spreads across but doesn't obscure anything, just makes things _gleam_ with a heady sort of bloodlust, a thirst for violence, for power.

He accepts it, his place as leader, _controller_ , and the power that Azazel gave him—oh, it wasn't gone, it was idling away, waiting for him to make _this choice_ , and it fills him up now: his demonic gifts, this thrill, this strength. He's blown wide open, capable of doing anything he wants to—lifting mountains with his mind, boiling seas dry, the whole shebang.

Lilith stands in front of him. "See, Sam," she says, malicious glee twisting her delicate features, "together, you and I—we lead this army. We rip this earth apart."

He feels it tempt at him, at the greedy power in him, imagines for a second using all the strength that fills him to destroy and lead the world. His mind buzzes hot with the thought of it, and Lilith's eyes flash out full white again as she smiles.

She'd wanted this, had promised him power, riches, anything he wanted, to stand with her and control the whole fucked-up world. She'd promised to lift Dean's deal, promised him he could keep Dean with him, promised him like she thought she'd be able to give him anything once he took this on. What she doesn't realize—so lost in her own arrogance and drunk on tyranny and control—is that Azazel didn't do anything halfway. This power that fills Sam now: he wasn't just meant to lead the demons. He was meant to control them. Control them all, control and lead each and every demon in an army. Even her.

He feels every demon on earth, every stinking cloud of evil that was freed from hell, and he calls them to him through the skies until the light summer day darkens and flashes with the rolling cloud above him.

"You were right," he says, and he hears how his voice vibrates strangely, so much packed in behind it, "I can do wonderful, awful things." He focuses on her, sharpens the power and _pushes_ it towards her, drawing the demon slowly up and out through the young girl's mouth.

He ignores the kid as she collapses sprawled on the grass, can't let it go now, and watches Lilith as she roars and swirls up in the air. "But really, I don't need you to let Dean out of his deal. You don't need to give me his soul back when I can just take it."

He feels something twist easy in his mind, and knows with a giddy certainty that it's done. Dean's free. Out.

She's a twisting, writhing, grey-white malodorous smoke in front of him, and he shoves her up to join the rest of the demon cloud. It's somewhere around midday, but it's dark as pitch with flashes of purple-blue electricity sparking out, roaring and hissing filling the air.

He feels their anticipation, their glee, that he's stepped up to the plate—that their boy king takes up his crown. But what they don't know—can't know, because he's not one of them, not truly, he's _human_ —is that he can accept this, take it, and still not _want_ it. It's thick and tempting in his head, his power and destiny, but he thinks of Dean, he thinks of—everyone, of Mom and Dad and Jess and Bobby and Jo and Ellen and Andy and Ava and every person who's touched his life, everyone he owes things to, safety or justice, to stay _true_ ; it's not even a choice. He's Sam, and he's not going to become anything else.

He focuses his control, feels every demon and every movement and twist and hateful urge they have, stretching his mind like some crazy new sense, like a fresh grown limb that's strong and so hard to manage, but he does, he keeps them all _here_ , caught like fish struggling in a bulging net. He can't see an inch of the summer sky, now; it's all flashing blackness and noise, descending around him. He draws the cloud of demons in close, 'til he can feel the heat and stink lash out, whipping against his skin, burning shocks and creeping goosebumps all over him.

And now he has them under his control, under the command of his mind—" _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus—_ "

It hurts, because he's banishing the demonic power as well as holding it inside himself to keep the demons above him, near in an angry cloud. But he pushes, hard, feels the forces warring within him bloody, but keeps _shoving_ the words out; keeps the power in, keeps the demons here, and oh, it hurts. Lightning slices up and down him like knives peeling the flesh from his bones, but he has to keep at it.

The demons are anguished and screaming all around with awful, inhuman voices. He knows they want him to stop, knows from the images that swirl in his mind— _Dean Mom Dad Jess you couldn't save them, you can't save them_ —that they're weaving together lies and fear and pain, his and theirs, 'til it feels like he's sunk into hell himself. Except he knows he's still here, on earth—he can feel as blood leaks from his nose, eyes, bubbles over his lips as he spits out the Latin, can feel the prickle of the short grass through his jeans against his knees as he falls to them and _screams_ the last of it, the words scorching so hot he can barely stand it, wants to screech like the demons around him.

He throws his head back, and then the power rushes through him, swelling and burning his throat but leaving, out of him in a sick, relieving rush.

Silence hits him like a punch, shocking and sudden, and he tries to open his eyes. It feels like an age before he can—and he squints against the brightness.

The air's light above him, now, demons gone, and he can even hear the rustle of trees moving in the wind and maybe even fucking birdsong, before he thinks _fuck, I did it,_ and collapses.

The air still smells crisp and acrid when he wakes up, smoke and filth still clinging to the grass, but there's silence, no evidence that he saved the world, that he saved his brother and himself. No demons, and he doesn't know if he sent them back to hell or destroyed them; can't remember through the agony and crazy pressure in his head exactly what happened as things had crashed into darkness, but he knows they're gone—really gone, saved-the-world kind of gone. The world's only just as fucked up as it ever was before the gates were slammed open, now.

He wipes a hand across his face, sticky blood smearing across his skin, and he grimaces.

He looks over the grass, sighs as he sees Lilith's body, or rather that of the little girl she hijacked, dead in the grass near him. Her eyes are half closed, just soft brown now, and he passes a palm over her face, closing them. He feels ridiculous for being sad over her—he saved the fucking world, so what's one little girl? But it wasn't fair to her.

He turns his head, looks the other way across the gentle grassy rise, and his breath sticks in his throat when he sees Dean, lying crumpled at the bottom of the low hill. _Dean._ His body, looking whole and real, and Sam doesn't know if the ruined torn body he buried is still there or gone or whatever, he doesn't care, he's been given this.

He struggles to his feet, falters—he aches all over but he needs to move to get to Dean right now. Dean's passed out, which Sam can't blame him for; god, looks like he's just lying there waiting for Sam, like he's been here all along, like Sam hasn't been going slowly crazy for over a month after Dean was dragged into Hell.

"Dean!"

He stumbles down the slope, falling down on his knees in the middle of his awkward run, throwing himself down to Dean, scrambling the last few feet on hands and knees.

"Dean!" He feels like laughing or just breaking down in tears, because, god, _Dean_ , after so long.

He pushes at Dean's shoulder and Dean rolls onto his back, and the sick, loose flop of his neck makes Sam's stomach clench and dip unpleasantly.

Sam's breath sticks in his throat again, this time catching on a horrified sob. Dean's eyes are wide open as he stares at the sky, but it's sightless, the blank stare of a corpse, and there's no Dean. Sam's hands leave bloody marks on Dean's shirt as he grips him .

" _Dean_!"

Dean can't be dead, because Sam saved him. He did everything; he _felt_ it happen, took the power away from Lilith and did it himself. Dean's body is back, it's here and undamaged, he's been given that, so why? Is this a sick joke, the last smack in the face? It was going to work, he knew it, it _had_ to, so this can't be right; any minute now he'll feel the sudden rise of Dean's chest, feel warmth flood back, feel the pulse stutter-start under the skin of Dean's neck where he's pressing his hot, wet face.

He stills as he hears something, but Dean's still not moving, so it doesn't make sense.

But he hears it again. "Sammy. _Sammy_."

Sam swallows, shuddering a last few sobs into Dean's neck—and he knows, and he lifts his head, and his chest is too tight for all the air he needs. Dean is standing on the other side of the body. He looks so beautiful and alive and Sam can't help but try—he lets go of the body crumpled on the floor and steps over it, towards Dean, but his hands swipe through nothingness, sliding through the unreal vividness of Dean's shirt, no bloodstains on this one. Dean's spirit looks back at him as Sam stops himself from stumbling right through.

"I saved you," says Sam, and he doesn't know where to look. "Hell didn't get you."

"No, it hasn't got me," says Dean, the _any more_ unspoken and terrifying in a way Sam can't think about—and Dean sounds the same, and it's unfair because Dean shouldn't have that voice, he has no body to speak with. Sam should have all or nothing, not this. "You saved me."

But—"No, I didn't, not really," says Sam. "I saved the world and I still couldn't save you. You're—" and Sam gestures helplessly at Dean's body.

Sam only realizes tears are running down his face when Dean frowns and says, "Sam, don't—you saved me, you _did_. I'm not in hell, I'm not even dead. I feel alive, I'm here."

Dean glances around, as if he can't understand where he is, can't believe it. He touches his face tentatively, looks down at his hands.

Sam shakes his head. "Then—why?"

Dean shrugs, looks back down at his body. "I don't know. I think—I don't think I'm allowed back in." He half smiles. "This is the third time I was supposed to leave that body. I reckon—it just feels like you can only cheat the natural order of stuff so many times, you know?"

"Bullshit," says Sam desperately, "I won, I saved you, can't you just—get back in?"

Dean's face flashes weirdly, fading out for a second, sorrow raw in it, and he flickers. "I've tried, Sammy, I've tried, but I _can't_. I'm sorry, but it's like—that body doesn't have anything to do with me. It's just a heap of flesh. I can't get back into it any more than I could get into a rock."

He flickers again, fading in and out slightly, like a bad television picture or—like a spirit.

Sam doesn't know what to do, his throat still thick with tears. He can't fucking handle this, not after—not after everything. He just wants to sleep, to shower, to be able to reach out and touch Dean and know he's alive and with him, to forget all this shit. He swallows hard, looks at Dean and pretends he could put his hand out and touch, watches the life in Dean's face and pretends it's real. It's almost reassuring. "So what, then? If you're not dead, we gotta be able to do something. We'll get you back."

Dean frowns. "Sam, I don't know. It doesn't feel right, looking at—trying to get back there. That—that's just dead flesh." His mouth twists up, a moue of disgust.

"So we leave you like this? A spirit? That's not living, Dean. Not like I fought for." Sam shakes his head. "I'm not giving up. Not after getting this fucking far." He hunkers down, slides his hands under Dean's body, and picks him up with a grunt. He grits his teeth, swallowing back down on the impulse to throw up as Dean's head lolls back over his arm, lips slackly parted.

"Careful with the merchandise, Sammy," says Dean, and grins, and it's so bright and real that Sam's brain can't accept that it's Dean's body heavy in his arms while Dean's right there in front of him.

"You really need to lay off the burgers, Dean," he says instead of doing something ridiculous like crying.

Dean laughs, and it should feel morbid, laughing with his brother about his corpse, but it makes Sam feel better. Reminds him that Dean's still here, and they're still them, brothers—still Sam and Dean.

He carries Dean down to the dirt lane at the bottom of the meadow where he parked the car and puts him in the back of the Impala. He tries to be as gentle as he can, drags him up with his hands under Dean's armpits, rolls him awkwardly so he's flat on his back, side snug up against the seat back. "Stay where you are," he tells Dean's body sharply.

Dean grins next to him. "I'll try."

Sam's not sure how well Dean will travel—he doesn't seem to be corporeal, or at least Sam's hand went straight through him, so Sam doesn't really know how he'd be able to sit in the car and travel and not just slip backwards through it. But Sam's seen ghosts travel in cars before, had more than one in the Impala, and if he starts thinking about how ghosts can exist and move and speak all over again like he tried to puzzle out when he was thirteen, trying to apply what he learned about science and biology at school to what he knows of the supernatural world, his head will hurt like it did then. He guesses that's what the _super-_ prefix is for, anyway.

He shakes his head.

"Can you—" and he gestures towards the car.

"Sorry, Sammy, think you'll have to drive," says Dean, and he's looking strangely at the car. Somberly. Of course it would be something like the car to make Dean sober up to this.

"No, I mean—" and Sam suddenly just wants, fiercely, for Dean to be able to slip into the driver's seat, hands familiar on the wheel while Sam balls his hoodie up against the glass on the passenger side and dozes. He shakes his head. Rather Dean next to him even he can't touch him; rather Dean there and talking in the passenger seat than the dead, deafening silence that's been filling his head since the first time he had to slip into the car alone, drive it on his own. It never got any easier, the silence roaring from the empty seat unbroken however loud he cranked the radio.

He opens the door for Dean, gestures him in and Dean shrugs and somehow manages to climb in the car, fits himself so he's sitting in the seat, even if he can't grip the door to close it.

He raises an eyebrow at Sam as if to say _don't ask me_ and Sam shrugs. He figures that if spirits want something enough, or accept something as unshakable truth—you walk on the ground, you sit in a car and stay put—it happens. It's sort of interesting, though. He'd thought about it before, when he was younger, and never come to any decent conclusions that satisfied his logical brain, and he learned to shrug off the parts of the supernatural word that didn't make sense. But it seems suddenly more important now it's Dean, like he needs to know everything about this version of his brother —how he moves, feels, thinks. He doesn't like not knowing everything about Dean, doesn't like not understanding him.

Dean waves his hand in front of Sam's face. "You can make me your science project later, Sam, but I wanna get out of here. It smells funky."

"You can smell?"

Dean rolls his eyes and Sam finds himself smiling. "Alright, I'll stop." He looks back over the hill and his smile fades. "Stay here a second. I gotta take care of that poor kid Lilith was possessing."

Sam takes the little girl's body down to the road, leaves her body by a signpost, wraps it in an old blanket from the back of the car.

"We'll call the police," he says, "anonymous tip-off, so at least someone can find her body, bury it, tell her family."

Dean nods. "Poor kid."

Sam shakes his head. "Yeah." He starts the ignition. "Where to?"

"Up to Bobby's, I guess? Might be nice to let him know that I'm back. You two can get your research heads on, if you're so determined to fix this." Dean coughs. "Uh. By the way, Sammy, forgot to say back there—good job on the whole, you know, 'saving the world' thing." He grins. "Knew you could do it. Bet you owned that Lilith bitch's ass."

Sam smiles again, little brother pride almost choking him. "Thanks."

"Yeah, well. Don't let it go to your head."

\--

It takes them about a day to get to Bobby's. Sam's all for driving straight there, but Dean makes him stop at a Motel 6 for a night, grab a shower and at least a few hours' sleep.

"You're gonna drive yourself off the road, Sam, you're fucking exhausted. It would kind of defeat the point of saving the world if you're not around to enjoy it for longer than a day. And if you wreck my baby again I'll kill you anyway."

Sam sighs. He doesn't want to stop, he wants to get to Bobby's, wants to get to books and answers and a solution because Dean's—well, Dean's body is dead flesh and there's only so much longer it can lie in the back of the car.

But Sam's exhausted, his eyes gritty and sore, and every inch of his body throbs with a low ache. His throat still hurts from where the demonic power in him rushed out, and he can feel the crust of dried blood still in the corner of his mouth, the stiffness of old sweat in his shirt. He wants to shower and then sleep for a year. "Yeah, alright. A couple hours."

They cover Dean's body with a tarp in the back, and one of Sam's questions is answered when they step into the reception. A spotty young kid who's got his algebra homework spread out next to the register eyeballs Sam and flicks a low look back at Dean when Sam asks for a single room.

He'd finally gotten used to asking for one bed, and for a second he dithers, because he doesn't even know if he needs one or two beds—Dean's back, alive, sort of, but does he need to sleep? Can he? Can he lie in a bed like he can sit in a car?

"Mister?"

"Sorry," he says, and slides the card across. And yeah, that's one of his questions answered—other people can definitely see Dean. That's a relief, in a way. Shows Dean's not just a hallucination, a product of his desperate mind. He'd seen Dean everywhere in the first few days after Dean had gone, in the laugh of a stranger across the other side of a diner, in the gait of a trucker across a gas station, in a flash of bright eyes in the dark of a bar, and each time his heart had leapt, stupid sudden jerk of hope in his chest that physically hurt, and the crash down was even worse, misery warring with the shaky after-rush of adrenaline.

"Get some sleep, Sammy," says Dean as he follows Sam into the room.

"What'll you do?" says Sam, already stifling a yawn.

Dean shrugs. Sam still can't believe, looking at him, that he's not really there, that the familiar, fluid movements are just—whatever it is you see when you see a spirit. A projection, or a memory, whatever it wants you to see, whatever you want to see.

He reaches out to check, can't help it, and wishes he hadn't when his hand moves through Dean like through so much smoke.

Dean raises his eyebrows. "I dunno, really. I don't feel sleepy. I guess you don't really need to sleep when you've got no body. I'll figure something out. Even if it's just watching your lazy ass snooze."

Sam nods. "I'm gonna take a shower. Don't—don't go anywhere." He's suddenly terrified to let Dean out of his sight, like Sam seeing him is all that's tying him here.

"Wasn't planning on it." Dean sits down in a chair and looks mildly surprised. "Guess it's like the car," he says, and Sam nods.

He showers in record time, hair still dripping when he stumbles back out of the bathroom.

Dean's still in the chair, watching the parking lot out the window, the afternoon sun glinting on the cars. He turns his head, and Sam notices that even though the sun seems to light on his skin, touches on his eyelashes and spreads gold over his face, the shadow on the floor shows an empty chair. It doesn't make sense, but Sam's sort of glad, anyway. It makes Dean seem more real, more truly _there_ , with the sun in his eyes.

"Now why couldn't you be that quick whenever I was waiting to use the bathroom? I swear, the more covered in grave dirt and monster crap I was, the longer you'd take, and now you're all, 'Oh, two minutes is enough.' It's not right, dude."

Sam flicks him off and towels dry, pulls some clean clothes from his duffle, and Dean turns his head back to the parking lot.

Sam crawls into bed, nearly biting off his tongue when he stops himself from asking Dean to close the curtains. He slides back out, pads over and shuts them. The room's hardly dark, but it's enough that he thinks he can sleep.

"Night, Sammy." Dean relaxes back in the chair, and Sam can still see him in the half-light, his quirked mouth and soft eyes. "Or day, whatever."

Dean stills suddenly—Sam can see some sort of tension shoot through him, and Sam wonders again how he can still read Dean's body so well if it's not even really there. He's always been able to read Dean; maybe this is the only way that his brain is able to make sense of somehow _knowing_ what Dean's feeling. Reading the physical signs, because that's what he understands.

Dean's eyes are fixed below Sam's face, and Sam realises with a rush what it is.

He touches the amulet slowly—he hadn't exactly forgotten it was there, had seen it every time he'd glimpsed a mirror and had let it spur him on, but he'd gotten used to it. "See," he says now, "we need to get your body back so you can put it back on. Doesn't really suit me."

"Thanks," says Dean awkwardly.

"I was hardly going to throw it away. I gotta keep it so I remember to make you get me a proper present to make up for that Barbie one day."

Sam gets back under the covers, and he just watches Dean watching him for a few minutes.

"You want me to read you a bedtime story?" says Dean, and Sam remembers Dean reading to him when he was a kid. Sometimes books Sam brought home from school, sometimes articles from discarded newspapers with long words Dean stumbled over, but for a few months when Sam was about five it was only way Sam had been able to sleep: to the low rhythm of Dean's voice.

He doesn't say anything, but Dean talks anyway, some random story about this time he'd tried to sneak into the school gym at night when he was sixteen to make out with Becky Garnett and gotten caught by the janitor and narrowly avoided spending the night in a cell, until Sam drifts off.

  


He wakes up about five hours later, judging from the deepening twilight.

"Fuck," he says groggily. "We gotta. Ugh. Get going."

Dean's sitting right where he was when Sam last saw him.

"Sleep?" asks Sam, pulling himself out of bed and tugging on his jeans.

"Nah," says Dean, "don't think I can. Just sort of drifted. Kinda relaxing, actually." He looks at the clock. "Didn't feel like five hours. I think time isn't quite the same like this." He's flickering in and out faintly but rapidly, and Sam's heart suddenly seizes.

"Don't—don't drift too much, Dean. What if you—you know. Drift apart, or something?" _What if you go away? What if you go to where you're meant to go when you don't have a body?_ he doesn't say.

Dean closes his eyes, looks like he's concentrating, and comes into sharper focus. He opens them and grins at Sam. "Don't worry, dude, I'm not going anywhere. I can just—if I relax a little, I can sort of spread out. Like—" he waves his arm around vaguely. "I think I stay like this cause it's what I expect, and what you expect, but I'm not—I don't think I'm tied to it. It's just a shape, you know? Just a way I have of being. Being seen." He shrugs.

"Well, it wigs me out to think of you being all floaty and invisible around my head, so stay like that, alright?"

Dean cocks a hand to his head in a salute. "Aye, aye. Now let's get gone, okay? I don't want me stinking up my car."

Sam grimaces, but they're out quickly.

\--

Sam feels suddenly, strangely nervous as they pull up to Bobby's. He hasn't seen Bobby for a while; Sam took himself off after Dean went to Hell, wrapped up in a lonely grief and a crazy obsession with getting to Lilith, and he'd sort of forgotten about the existence of pretty much anyone in the world. He'd deleted texts and voicemails without even bothering to see what they said, eventually chucking his phone out of the Impala window.

He knocks a little sheepishly, now.

The childish part of him wishes he had a camera to get a picture of Bobby's slack-jawed face when he opens the door.

"Sam," he says, "the hell are you doing here? I—we all thought you were dead, haven't heard from you in—Christ, we don't even know if Dean—" and he cuts himself off by grabbing at Sam in a rough hug.

"Hey, Bobby," says Sam when Bobby lets him go. "Sorry, I was kind of crazy."

"Where've you been? What happened with the demons? All the activity just dropped off a couple days ago, and I didn't know if they were gearing up for a big showdown—Ellen and I have been trying to coordinate some hunters, but most are running scared."

Sam can't help but smile. Bobby looks at him like he's insane, which is probably justified. "Don't worry about that, Bobby, I took care of it." He raises a hand in what's meant to be a nonchalant gesture, but it shakes a little. He still can't quite believe it's over, that part of it. He's been too wrapped up in Dean to even think about that too much, but fuck, he _did_ it. "Sent them all back to hell."

Bobby stares at him. "You shitting me, boy?" He looks worried. "All by yourself?"

"Yeah," says Sam, shakes his head and swallows, and something must show in his face, because Bobby suddenly sighs, but there's relief in it.

"You're a Winchester, for sure—fucking impossible. I don't know what you did, don't know if I want to, but—well done, kid. Should've kept me in the loop, though. You know there are a whole lot of us wanted to help."

Sam shrugs awkwardly. "I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. I was sort of—crazy. I was probably just as likely to go darkside and help them tear the world apart than save it." He can still drag back the memory of that temptation, and it scares him, and he knows Bobby doesn't believe he could've done that, but Bobby doesn't know Sam as well as he thinks he does. Sam forces a shaky smile.

Bobby looks at him. "No you weren't, Sam." His gaze sharpens, and Sam knows what he's going to ask now. "And did you—what about—"

Sam smiles and moves to the side. Dean steps into view from behind him. "Hey, old man," he says with a grin.

"Dean! Fuck, I shoulda known not even hell could keep you down. It's good to see you, you idiot." Bobby sticks his hand out, and Sam watches Dean put his own out without thinking, and feels guilty for the confusion and resignation that threads through the happiness on Bobby's face as Dean's hand goes straight through Bobby's.

"Yeah," says Sam, "we got a little problem. But I'm pretty sure we can fix it," and Bobby sighs and Sam tries to not look at him with too much pleading hope.

\--

They're in the kitchen filling Bobby in on what they know—which isn't a whole lot—when Sam realizes something. "Hey, Bobby," he says, "you salt all your doorways, right?"

He nods.

Sam gestures towards Dean. "And Dean passed through fine."

Dean looks back towards the doorway and nods. "Yeah, didn't feel a thing. See, I'm not like a regular spirit, Sam—I'm not dead."

"You're not _wrong_ like most spirits, you're not somewhere you shouldn't be, so cleansing and purifying stuff like salt doesn't do jack." Bobby looks at Dean. "You are meant to be here, you just can't—" and he gestures randomly, "—get all up in your body. Where you should be."

Dean grins. "That sounds dirty."

Sam ignores Dean and nods. "Yeah, 'cause other spirits are like—something unhappy or unfinished, an echo, a remnant, something not natural. Dean's—I got him back, he's his whole soul and self, his whole _essence_ , just without a body."

Dean raises an eyebrow. "See? I told you I didn't feel dead, Sam. I'm me, just a little more—transparent. The lack of my earthly body is more a tragedy for the rest of the human race than for me, frankly." He shakes his head. "Such skills lost, so many women left unsatisfied."

"Shut up, pig," says Sam, but he feels better. Dean's here, really truly alive. Meant to be here. This is just—a bump in the road.

Bobby has a large chest freezer in his basement, and they put Dean's body in there for now and crank the dial way up to its coldest. Sam doesn't know what else to do, but he doesn't want to give up on Dean's body and this is their best shot at preserving it for now and hoping it'll still be—inhabitable, when they figure this out. They wrap him in an old sheet to protect against freezer burn on his skin, fit him in around packs of peas and bags of frozen ground beef and it's one of the strangest things Sam's ever done. He closes Dean's eyes and tries to arrange Dean's rigor mortis-stiff limbs to fit as best as he can without breaking anything and doesn't, _doesn't_ do anything like cry or laugh or puke or pass out.

Bobby sets Sam down in his living room with a pile of books to his left, pad of paper to his right and laptop in the middle and lets Sam lose himself in research while Bobby makes some calls, checks some more books.

Sam plays half-unconsciously with the amulet as he reads, twisting the cord around his fingers, knocking the charm against his knuckles. He feels strangely caught and flushes when Dean walks through and his eyes catch on the movement, before meeting Sam's.

"I kinda—" and Dean looks suddenly awkward. Bobby's out in the kitchen, trying to track down an old contact who was an expert in the study of necromancy-type magic. The idea of that kind of stuff being involved makes Sam a little uncomfortable, but it's relevant, some of it; concepts, at least. Could help.

"Dean?"

Dean sighs and scratches the back of his neck. Sam can't help but wonder if that feels like anything—if he can feel his fingers on himself.

"Sammy, I just. I never thanked you, you know? For getting me out. Back."

Sam half smiles. "It's not like I had a choice, really."

"Yeah, well, I know how you feel." He fixes Sam with a look. "I don't regret what I did. Wouldn't even if I was still—there." Dean hasn't talked once about what it was like, the month hell had him. "But I wasn't exactly pleased about leaving you. So it's, you know. Nice to be back. Keep an eye on you. And I know you aren't gonna tell me what you did or how you did it, and I know making you promise not to use your freaky demon powers or do anything stupid was never gonna work, but all I can do is trust you that it wasn't too bad."

Dean goes silently back out to the kitchen before Sam can think of anything to say. He refuses to feel guilty that he sort of did use his freaky powers, because it _worked_ , dammit, but he can't think of how to explain it Dean without him getting mad. Doesn't really want to.

And of course Dean would thank Sam for bringing him back so he could _keep an eye on Sam_. Not for being rescued from the fires of hell for his own sake. Sam doesn't fucking know what to do with his brother sometimes. He sighs and opens up the next book.

\--

Research is hard as he and Bobby sink into it, long discussions and longer periods of silence as they work and Dean wanders off to god-knows-where. This is unlike anything Sam's really familiar with—unlike anything either of them have really dealt with before. He doesn't know where to look.

Necromancy's a dark, dangerous area, but they start there, anyway. There are spells, many centered around reanimating a corpse, but they've come across that before: zombies, dark ugly evil dead things, even if Dean would probably think it an awesome idea to make a Dean-zombie. There's a certain amount of more complex work centered around dragging a spirit back into its body, but Bobby's pretty sure that sort of stuff wouldn't work, and Sam has to agree with him. That stuff—it's all about pulling the soul back over from where it had gone, all tied up in horrific ancient blood magic and sacrifice and risk, and once the spirit's back it snaps into its body. Getting Dean's spirit back isn't the problem here. It's the link between spirit and body, that which those resurrection spells depend on, that's broken—severed by laws way higher than they can understand, it seems—and neither Sam, Bobby, nor any of his contacts seem to know what to do to restore that link.

There are other angles, and Sam points his research away from necromancy and into spirits and what they can do. There's the possibility of possession: he knows some spirits can possess objects—even though it's weird to think of Dean's body as an object—or even other people, but Dean had said he couldn't do anything with the body, couldn't get into it. There may be rituals, channels, but nothing leaps out at Sam as he tears through dusty books and badly-designed websites, and tension grows hot behind Sam's eyes as he keeps looking.

Sam snaps on the sixth day of increasingly desperate and fruitless research—going from facts and history to guesswork and wild speculation. "I can't do this, Bobby," he says, and Bobby looks up, peers over his reading glasses.

Sam sighs. "I'm not—giving up. I can't. But—" but he _knows_ this. He knows this awful rising helplessness, poring over books and frantically trying to see if there's anything he's missed, going over the same paths and conclusions again and again—he did all this the first time around, trying to find a way out of Dean's deal, and it never worked then and he's starting to think it won't now. He won't give in to the despair he can feel eating blackly at the back of his mind, but he won't sit here and waste the life he fought for, and he won't waste time with Dean, even if it's not perfect.

Bobby nods. "Look, there are still more possibilities. It's only been a few days. I'm still waiting to hear back from a couple people, and there's a few more spells we can look at to do with spiritual possession, and I know Dean's not happy about it but we haven't exhausted some of the more obscure necromancy books."

"Nothing risky, though, Bobby, you know that. No blood, no death, no sacrifice of any kind."Sam frets at the thought, feels the echo of the press of despair and remembers the way grief-fueled rationalization had pushed him further across lines he never thought he could cross—but he left that sort of spiraling desperation and twisting morals behind with the Trickster, he _did_.

"Couldn't agree more, and I'm not gonna let you do something stupid or Dean'll find a way to make me regret it. You'll be lucky to get something for nothing, though, kiddo."

Sam knows, but Dean had made him promise, said he wasn't worth anyone else suffering for his fourth chance at life. Sam had snapped at him, angry—who else deserved it more?—but Dean had been steadfast and Sam had to agree. No more death or needless suffering. They've had more than enough.

Sam stands up. "I just need to get out of here. Go somewhere."

"I'll keep checking in. Let you know anything new I find or come up with." But Bobby looks pleased. "Go on, get out of here. No sense in sittin' around wasting the life you got back."

Dean raises an eyebrow when Sam walks out to the yard. Dean seems to have been engrossed in a staring competition with Bobby's new dog, Ashcroft.

"Having fun?" asks Sam with a grin.

"Seeing as I have to make my own fun while you two bond with the books." Dean looks back at Ashcroft who's watching him with a curious but calm sort of expression. "He can definitely see me, and he's not scared of me or anything, but he knows something's not right." Dean reaches a hand out and instead of reaching out to try and sniff it or push his head into it, Ashcroft just carries on watching Dean.

Dean looks back at Sam. "Found anything?" but he doesn't look all that hopeful, just mildly interested.

"Nah," says Sam. "We're going. Illinois."

"Some answers there?"

"Nope. Aughisky. Irish water horse."

Dean grins slow. "In Illinois?"

"It's the inland lakes – aughiskies like them. Musta hitched a ride with Irish immigrants way back when, attached itself to the lakes once it found them, and now it's decided all of a sudden to kick off and drown a load of Chicagoans."

"Dude, let's get gone. I am itching to get back in the saddle."

Sam grins. "Don't get in this particular saddle or you might regret it."

\--

It's the first time since Dean went to hell—since a bit before that, really—that Sam's allowed himself to relax, enjoy a drive. Driving to Bobby's he'd been focused on getting this fixed, and although that's still his aim, he's not in the same rush; he knows that sort of pace, that desperation will drive him crazy. He's letting himself enjoy this, at last: him and Dean and the car and the road, like before, like the closest thing he has to the familiarity of a home.

Dean insists on getting out of the car without Sam opening the door when they stop at a gas station, just to see if he can. He can, and it gives Sam the strangest jolt to see Dean slide through the solid metal. Dean cackles and Sam sees a trucker stare at them from across the way—sees him frown and then look down at his own gas pump and step away, stretching out his arm, putting his other hand up to his face to ward off the fumes. The reprimand Sam was all ready to snap at Dean dies on his tongue and he finds himself swallowing his own laughter.

Dean makes him put on Metallica and for once Sam doesn't protest. The wind's warm as it rushes past the window, the road is open and Dean's singing along to screechy, outdated rockers. This is what Sam fought for.

"So fill me in, then," says Dean, and Sam smiles. Only thing left to complete the picture—the discussion of the hunt.

"Rash of disappearances along the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, centered around the shore area near Grant Park though a mile or so up and down. All victims were last seen around near the lake at night—only remains ever left behind are their _livers_ floating offshore; they've only been found for a few of the missing persons, but confirmed with DNA where possible. The other ones I assume were eaten or drifted too far out or otherwise lost."

"That's gross. Their livers?"

"Lore states," say Sam with a grin, "that the aughisky is an inland-lake-favoring Irish water horse spirit, of the same family as the Scottish _each uisgeand_ and bearing some relationship with the Welsh _ceffyl dwfr_ , which is probably pronounced nothing like that but whatever, it's not too important right now. Legend has it that the horse comes out of the water in the evenings so it can graze on the land; people who see them are caught up in some kind of thrall and try to ride them. The horses allow this and can be subdued and ridden until they catch a glimpse of their lake—then they rush back into it, dragging the rider into the water. The spirit is said to devour the whole person in the water except for the liver—which is why the livers and the inland water point pretty firmly to this critter. Not to mention the only real witness swears she saw a victim approaching a horse at the water's edge."

"So how do we kill it?"

"Fairly easy—pierce through the heart with iron. It's just getting close to it without getting dragged off into the water."

"We can manage that. Thrall, schmall."

"Plus it would have a hard time dragging you."

Dean grins, but it looks a bit forced. "Yeah. You better not do anything stupid, you know. I won't be able to come rushing to your rescue unless you want me to spook the horse to death."

Sam looks at him. "Don't worry, I'll be careful. You'd glare me to death if I wasn't." He's curious, though. "So—what exactly can you do? Anything?"

Dean narrows his eyes and reaches out a hand. "If I try really hard—very Swayze, dude—I can sort of force myself to _feel_ the same as well as look the same." He bites his lip and pushes his hand at the dash. The first time it sinks in, but then Dean makes a frustrated noise and moves again, and there's a dull thudding noise as his knuckles bump against the plastic. He grins. "See? It's not exactly fine-tuned but I figure enough practice and I could be like that creepy dude on the train. I'll be smashing up vending machines for cigarettes in no time."

He drops his hand back into his lap.

Sam takes a hand off the wheel to point. "That! When you touch yourself— _not_ like that, so don't even start. Just—at all. Can you feel anything?"

Dean still smirks at him anyway, but doesn't take the bait. "No, not really. I remember what it was like to feel stuff, but I don't now, really. 'Cause this," he gestures down at himself, "isn't real, it's just a sort of an image, you know? When I move, or speak, whatever, it's just like a reflection of what I'd feel or do or say normally. I feel something, then just know what I'm doing, what you're seeing and hearing, but I don't feel myself moving. It's hard to explain," and he looks frustrated, but Sam gets it. He thinks.

"How do you stop yourself just fading off, then? You flicker out sometimes, but you mostly stay."

Dean shrugs. "It's the sort of effort like breathing or walking is. Was. It's there, but you don't think about it. I just know I'm keeping myself together, and I just look how both of us expect. But I can stop, can make myself fade out, even though I'm still here, if I think about it."

Dean looks off, out of the window but not really looking at anything, and flickers and fades in front of him.

Sam can't stop the cold rush of fear and he makes a quick, abortive gesture. "Don't—do that. Sorry. It just kinda freaks me out. Keep thinking you might not come back. Need to see you." He keeps his eyes on the road but he can see Dean nod in the corner of his vision.

"Alright. I ain't going anywhere, though, promise. No more likely to pass on, or whatever, than you are. Just kinda know I'm not done here."

\--

They stop at a motel a little way outside Minneapolis that night, aiming to get into Chicago late morning the next day and scope out the area.

Dean wanders in after him and Sam asks for a king. Again, the guy flicks a look back at Dean. It's a strangely familiar feeling, an odd shiver in his stomach, at the assumption, a feeling he'd gotten used to but never really been all that comfortable with, or really figured out. He grins this time, though; it's more amusing than anything else. Easy to shake off. After all they've been through, after what he lost and got back and fought for and saved, what some random motel clerk thinks of him is—god, nothing. _Saved your life, buddy,_ he thinks, and swipes the keys with a cheery, "Thanks!"

He crashes as soon as they get in, and Dean sits again, stares out the window. It takes Sam a while to sleep, with the strange presence of Dean in the room, knowing he isn't sleeping, not knowing what it is he is doing. He thinks about what Dean said, and tries to imagine what it must be like—to have no body, no presence, just your _self_ ; to rely on the strength of just your soul, your core self with everything else gone and shed like old clothes, to just be. Dean was such a force, such a presence, all Sam's life, it makes sense he has no real trouble holding himself together, in his own self-image. So assured, so _Dean_. Sam doesn't know if he could do it. All the doubts and wonders and what-ifs that he's been collecting through his life, from _what if there's more than this_ , to _what if I should have stayed_ ; _what am I_ to _what could I become_ —he feels like he's got so many odd little holes and stretched places inside him, he'd just blow away without something to anchor it all together.

\--

Chicago's bright and busy and Sam feels a little overwhelmed, like every time they step into a city. They spend so much of their life on roads, in small towns, that he kind of forgets what it's like in a place like this, the way the sheer weight of humanity just seems to bleed into every corner. Tall buildings crammed with people, streets packed with cars and shops and lives going on all around and people, people, people. _Saved you all_ , he thinks again, and can't get a grasp on how huge that is. He thinks of the city burnt, a wasteland, a demon playground. It doesn't seem possible in this bright sharp sun, fresh breeze that whips at his hair, the noise of the city—chatter and shouts and bursts of music and honks—a hum all around.

"You're sure it was a horse?"

Dean's talking to the chick who saw it—she'd been jogging lakeside the night Johnny Finn had gone missing, the night before his liver had surfaced a little down the shore. Her name's Moira Page and Sam thinks Dean would want to fuck her if things were—as they were before. She's got a pert, sporty body, glossy brown hair up in a ponytail.

Dean whined on the drive in until Sam capitulated and said he could come along and speak to people, long as he didn't do anything to draw attention to the fact he wasn't actually there. So Dean's keeping his distance, but Sam's pretty sure he's not imagining the gleam in Dean's eyes. He doesn't know whether to feel obscurely guilty that there's nothing Dean can do about it even if he does indeed want to fuck her, a little annoyed that even as a spirit Dean can still charm women into eating out of his proverbial hand, or strangely smug that even if she wants to fuck him, too, she can't. _No one else can have him now_ , he thinks, and it should make him feel sorry for Dean, not pleased. He figures he's allowed a little possessiveness, though—even if it's strange in this context—after what he's been through. After how he got Dean back. He should be allowed to keep him.

She nods and takes a swig from her water bottle. "I swear. Big white thing, pretty. There was enough light from the walkway to see them pretty clear. The guy walked right up to it, and I slowed down because hey, not every day you see a big horse on the shore of the lake here, right? I noticed the man had a really ugly orange shirt on which is how I recognized his description when he went missing. I didn't stop, though, didn't want to intrude or get involved in something that wasn't to do with me, so I kept on going."

"So you didn't see if he got on the horse?"

"Nah, just saw him reach out to it. The image just stayed with me, you know?" She frowns. "The other policeman didn't seem too interested in this when I told him the other day."

Dean smiles, all charm. "Nice guy, that one, but kind of a rookie, what can I say. We're going over things a little more carefully and your account is _deeply_ important to us."

She giggles, a light airy noise, and Sam steps forward. "Thanks, Miss Page, but that's all we need for now. Have a nice day," and he turns and leaves her bright, pretty apartment. He clenches his fist against the impulse to grab at Dean's arm to tug him along, and hopes he's following.

"Chill, dude," says Dean when they reach the car. "What crawled up your ass and died?"

"Just tone it down a little, huh? Flirt too much and you'll have a chick lunge at you or something and how do we explain it when she ends up on the floor behind you?"

"Hey, Sammy, I can't just turn it off—it's a gift." He raises an eyebrow. "That's not why you're pissed. You want her yourself? Go ahead, I'm hardly competition at the moment."

Sam scowls. "No, Dean."

"Come on, Sammy, why not? I know she's your type—or one of them, you do like to mix it up—and you can't tell me you weren't checking out that ass in those bike shorts. And it wasn't just me she was eyeing there, let me tell you. Reckon she has a thing for suits."

Dean would be right; she is, she's hot, Sam's horny in that way where he doesn't really want to be or care that he is—kind of pushed it to the side while the impending apocalypse took up his energy—but he still _is_ , hasn't had anything but his own hand in god, over a year. But it's just—not that easy. He can sense the interest but it's like looking at something underwater: hazy, indistinct, not really real.

Dean looks at him more seriously, now. "You can't let all this shit stop you from living, Sam. Quit with that complex that it's _dangerous_ for them. Life's dangerous, and a little bit of fun with someone doesn't mean you're dragging them out into the path of a poltergeist or anything."

Sam shrugs. "The last two girls I slept with died, Dean. Can we just drop it? At least for now?"

It's not just that, though it's a big part of it. He's too dangerous for a normal girl, and it's not fair. He doesn't want to bring anyone more tragedy than he already has, and he's still scared, a small part of him, of what _he's_ capable of, if he could hurt anyone. Not the demon power, just. Him. He knew he should have kept on listening to his gut when it warned him off Sarah back in New York—long time ago, seems almost like another life even though he can still feel the edges of the pain he'd carried then—and Madison cemented it for him. Not worth it.

But it's also—he can't even see it, anymore. Even if he thought he was safe, if he wasn't putting someone's life at risk just by being in it—the appeal's dulled, disappeared, he can't see the _why_ , anymore. He just can't imagine sharing his life with someone on any sort of long-term basis. Normal people, who walk blithely through the dark and don't see the filthy underbelly of the world, the people he used to envy, are like some other species, now. How could they possibly understand? He's not like them, never could be and never really was. How can he live his life with someone who doesn't know what he's been through? Even if he told them—even if they knew the world he knew, the darkness in it – they could never really get it, what he's done, how he's lived. And he’s done trying to pretend he’s something he’s not: it’s like a betrayal of what he’s managed, of what his whole life has meant.

Dean clearly wants to protest—sporting a frown that looks irritated but Sam recognizes it as a very specific sort of concern that's all saved up for _Sam getting laid_ —but keeps his mouth shut. He makes a ' _fine, fine_ ' gesture.

Sam shakes his head. "Let's just get ready for tonight. We'll get the iron spear, bless it with a couple rituals to cover our bases, stake out the bit of shoreline she was near when it showed up, get it done."

\--

Sam's yawning and wondering if he can take a nap and get Dean to wake him up by yelling loudly when the moon slips out from behind a cloud and finally lights on the long white mane of a large horse walking out of the water. God, Sam has forgotten how much he hates stake-outs.

  


He moves quickly, though, quietly slipping out of the car and closing the door as quietly as he can. Dean throws him a smug smile that Sam knows means _'I don't even need to use the door'_ , and they're both moving swiftly toward the lake.

Sam hefts the spear and jogs up, slowing as he gets off the walkway, out of the orangey glow of streetlights. He plans to try and get close to the aughisky without it seeing him, then plunging the spear into its chest before it can hit him with whatever Irish water-spirit whammy it has. It's not much of a plan, but he's relying on speed and a dose of Winchester luck, such as it is.

Its mane wavers slightly in the soft breeze coming off the lake, and it's strangely pretty. It's white, but not that dirty off-white color most white horses end up even if well looked-after—it's a glowing, unearthly kind of white. Its coat is smooth and Sam's eyes are pulled slow down its graceful lines.

It whickers gently, and Sam looks at it and smiles. It has large, dark, liquid eyes, with an old sort of pleading in them, like a Labrador puppy. Its nose is dark and looks velvety soft. Sam steps closer and reaches out to touch it but the fucking spear thing's in the way. He frowns and sets it down on the ground.

He thinks he can hear someone yelling behind him, but he ignores it, doesn't want to spook the horse. If he's careful enough, maybe it would let him ride it. He reaches up and touches its nose, combs his fingers through its mane—as soft as it looks, soft like silk or flowing water over his fingers. He steps up close and runs his hands over its strong shoulder, wonders what would be the best way to get up on it. He looks back at its large dark eyes. "Can I?" he asks, and he can see its acquiescence in those beautiful eyes.

The yelling's louder, and all of a sudden something hard barrels into the horse, and it staggers, whinnies, rears up.

Sam stumbles backwards and snaps out of it, reaches out frantically for the spear even as he watches Dean fall on the floor. How did he—Sam nearly yells and his chest seizes painfully as the horse's hooves come down on top of Dean, his body locking up in fear, but of course they just pass through Dean, who's still a heap on the floor, flickering in and out rapidly, and Sam can see him panting, exhausted.

His fingers bump against the cold iron of the blessed spear and he grips it gratefully, focuses hard on Dean to try and ward off the thrall, and he lunges back towards the horse. He raises the spear above his head and holds it with two hands, puts all his strength in shoving it into the horse, true through the broad white chest.

The aughisky makes an awful noise, a screaming whinnying wail. Bright blood spurts over the impossibly white coat, and Sam has to let go of the spear as the horse thrashes. The other end of it strikes him across the face, pain flashing through his skull and his skin splitting open along his cheekbone. He stumbles backward and sees the horse rear above him, and thinks _oh, shit_ , before the aughisky suddenly disappears—no, doesn't disappear, but collapses into an unpleasantly warm wave of water that falls down on Sam, drenching him and stinging on his cut face.

Sam frowns and shakes his head, wipes the water from his eyes. He pants, half-giddy with relief and the pump of adrenaline.

Dean's suddenly next to him. He looks tired but angry, an expression so familiar. "Idiot, idiot," he spits, and he's still faint. Sam can see the glow of the streetlights through him. "What if I couldn't—" he cuts himself off, looks out at the lake.

"See," says Sam, "you're not entirely useless." It's probably the wrong thing to say, as Dean tightens his jaw and flickers again, then stalks off, but Sam's feeling tangled up with fear and adrenaline and relief and guilt and embarrassment he let himself get caught, and barely knows what to think, let alone what to say to Dean.

He scrambles up, sucking in a breath at the sting of the cut. He can feel warm blood trickle down his cheek. He hurries after Dean, dragging the spear behind him, leaving a furrow in the ground.

"Dean, Dean," he says as he catches up, "I'm sorry, man, sorry." He falls into step as Dean looks at him sideways. "How," he starts awkwardly, "how did you do that?"

Dean shrugs. "It was just like focusing to make myself substantial, 'cept on a bigger scale. Apparently you putting yourself in stupid mortal danger is enough to get some serious focus. Just sort of threw myself at the horse. Apparently it worked."

"Took a lot out of you, though."

Dean doesn't say anything, but he looks firmer, now. Light isn't filtering through him so much.

They stop at a run-down city hostel. Dean never likes staying at places in the city; they're invariably shittier and pricier, but Sam's bleeding pretty heavily from the cut, and he can feel a monster headache coming on—whether from the blow, the adrenaline comedown, or the after-effects of the aughisky's whammy, he doesn't know, but there's no way he's up to driving anywhere far tonight.

He digs into the medical kit with shaking hands and sits awkwardly in the bathroom on the toilet seat, trying to angle himself in front of the mirror so he can sew up the cut—it's big, deep and long enough to need at least a couple stitches.

Dean stands in the doorway, frowns as Sam tries to not let his hands tremble too much as he threads the needle, propping his elbows awkwardly on the sink and cursing.

Dean makes a frustrated noise. "Maybe I could—" he says and steps into the bathroom next to Sam. His hand goes straight through Sam's arm. He frowns and tries again, reaching for the medical kit, and this time it works, except there's no precision—he just knocks it off the shelf, and bandages and pill bottles go flying out all over the floor.

"God fuck _dammit_ ," says Dean, and he stalks out of the bathroom. "So fucking useless," Sam can hear him muttering, low and angry.

He doesn't stay out there for long, though, comes back to stand in the doorway again like he can't bear to leave Sam to mess this up on his own, even if he can't help. The fluorescent strip bulb lights him as if he were real, like the sun did—makes his skin look sickly yellow, like every other crappy cheap motel or roadside bathroom Sam's been in in his life, seen Dean in.

"I can do it myself," Sam mutters, "did before." He can't help but remember again with a shiver those cold long months without Dean when he sewed himself up, organized his life so carefully, precariously, around the gaping hole Dean left—and it isn't like that now, it isn't, Dean's here this time. He pushes the pressing memories away.

It's still difficult to do it himself, sense memory shaky in his fingers, and the angle's awkward on his own face. Dean looks like he's going to say something—maybe ask _when_ exactly Sam did this before—but he swears under his breath instead when Sam hisses at the sting of peroxide as he cleans the cut. He looks at Dean with what he hopes is wordless reassurance and grips the needle.

Dean watches him with sharp eyes. "Careful, Sammy," he says, and "Watch your fucking _eye_ ," as Sam sews himself up. They both know Dean would have done it better, neater, easier, more painlessly, but he can't, and Sam bites back the noises he wants to make as the needle punches through his skin, because he doesn't want to make Dean feel any worse. He already feels guilt eating blackly at the pit of his stomach, because it's his fault. He couldn't get Dean back properly and it's his fault Dean feels so useless, can't even help fix up Sam with a cut. Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

They get back on the road to nowhere in particular, though Sam heads vaguely south—he doesn't want to be in the cold as fall threatens. He's always thrived most in the heat, never as bothered as Dad and Dean by the few summers they spent in the South, muggy and thick air like a blanket. He finds it sort of reassuring, sweat prickling at every inch of him, even as it's uncomfortable. It always reminded him back then that he was truly _there_ , felt more anchored in his skin in a life that had nothing else to anchor him. He never tried to explain it to Dad and Dean, not when it didn't really make sense to himself, but he wants that, now.

They take it slow, and Sam tries to relearn life with Dean like this, but it's hard. Dean seems prone to mood swings—sometimes he's almost giddy, fucking around, walking through walls and laughing, making Sam stop off at tacky roadside attractions—then he'll shut up, spend a couple days monosyllabic and surly.

They find out there's something strange going on in Louisiana, after Sam does some digging, so there they head—a rash of deaths centered around a small park in downtown Baton Rouge. It's near the State Capitol building, a creepy place with strange gothic revival architecture, turrets and fluer-de-lis-patterned gates that loom ominously as Sam walks to and through the park, flashlight in hand. He circles the huge water tower that dominates the small park, which most of the victims are found morbidly propped up against. The whole place, like the city throughout, sends uneasy shivers up Sam's spine, so steeped in ancient myth, magic and voodoo. He's almost let down when it turns out to be a regular restless spirit: a girl murdered for her loose change by the water tower one night not a couple years back, angry and lost and homicidal in her rage.

It's easier than something dark and old, at least, just a salt-and-burn and out. She's buried in a cemetery a little way across town, and it takes Sam most of the night digging her up, sweat pouring down his face and mixing with the dirt he smears on his skin when he wipes his face with his forearm. His shirt sticks to his back and he can smell himself and Dean just has to watch. They don't say much on the drive out.

Bobby gives Sam a call—nothing new on the research front, but while they're down there, can they swing over into Mississippi—he's heard talk of an aswang snacking on some kids near Hattiesburg, so they do.

They take care of that, a fight and success and a lot of mess, thankful families, and it's—it's hard, everything. Strange, like with the murdered girl spirit, like up in Chicago. It's just—it's everything and nothing like before, with Dean there and familiar. Sam can talk to him, see him, feel again the pull of their years and history, but everything's off-kilter. Sam has to do everything, and god, he doesn't mind, doesn't resent that, it's just. This was never really his thing as much as it was Dean's. But what else can they do? It's an exhausting job on his own, even with Dean _there_ ; he remembers vaguely, even though he tries to forget, what it was like in those months without Dean, searching for the Trickster. It had been hard then, but he'd been so driven, nothing but _Dean_ running through his mind. Now it's just—tiring. He doesn't even know what he's aiming for, anymore.

Dean tries, Sam knows he does, but it's not as easy as they made it look in the goddamn movie, for all Dean's Swayze jokes. It takes a hell of a lot of concentration for the tiniest amount of physical presence—or a huge surge of emotion, neither of which are easy to dredge up regularly on command or for longer than a few seconds, and he's got nothing like fine motor control when he can.

Sam can tell Dean misses it, and they're both growing frustrated.

He dreams they're on a packed train, a subway somewhere. Dean's in front of him and raising a gun, but no-one around blinks an eye when Sam yells.

"See how you like it," says Dean, and shoots him in the chest.

It's not a subtle dream, and he tries to catch resentment in Dean's eyes even as he's terrified of it. Dean just gives him strange looks and goes back to seeing if he can make the waitress in the diner do a double take when he slides his hand through the coffee cup.

Sam points them back up towards Bobby's as they head away from Hattiesburg.

"Do we gotta, Sam? Of all the areas of the country to keep going up and down you chose the most boring parts. Can't we at least take a detour, go to Vegas or somewhere fun?" Dean gets bored in the passenger seat, restless without being able to drive, and he sometimes just talks, runs his mouth for hours on end about anything that comes into his head. Sometimes Sam joins in, has pointlessly detailed conversations about anything, and he really likes it, but sometimes his mouth aches and he just lets Dean ramble on, only stopping him when it gets too lurid.

"You can't gamble," points out Sam.

Dean shrugs. "Could watch you. Could freak people out so you win," but he doesn't sound all that enthused, like he's going through the motions. Typical Dean comments, like he's playing a part, playing at himself: what Sam expects to hear. Sam feels the discomforting knowledge that he doesn't really know what Dean's thinking right now. About anything.

"No," says Sam, "back to Bobby's. Sorry."

Dean mutters something but doesn't say any more about it.

He has the dream again that night, shitty motel somewhere in northern Kansas, can't even remember the name of the two-bit town they're by. Another one-bed room, and he still doesn't like the look of the room without another bed, reminds him too much of the times when he was truly alone, but no point in chucking money away on another bed they don't need, even if it's not their money.

He doesn't really know what Dean does in the night—knows he's generally sitting staring out the window when Sam settles in, but sometimes when he wakes up for a piss, for no reason, he can't see Dean. Sam figures he does what he said that one time—just sort of drifts, lets go of his image. What sleep you can have without a body.

He wakes in a cold sweat after the dream, blinking away Dean's cold eyes and the colder mouth of the gun bumping up against his chest, swallows away his fear. He punches the pillow and tries not to sob, futility and guilt and shame colliding in his head. This is such a fucking mess, it's not _fair_ to Dean. And it's his fault, his fault he couldn't let Dean go, had to use the power to bring him back not send him on, his fault Dean needed saving in the first place, his fault he couldn't do this properly, fix it; his fault Dean's stuck in this half-life.

He senses Dean somewhere around before Dean coalesces at the window.

"What's up, Sam?" Dean sounds groggy, strangely rusty.

"Nothing. Bad dream." He lies awake 'til dawn. He's pretty sure Dean knows but Dean doesn't say anything when he gives up and rolls out of bed at six.

He thinks on it as they drive up the I-29, stomach unsettled from the lack of sleep and eyes dry and scratchy like they're full of sand. The road unspools straight and dull before them into the equally dull flat Nebraska horizon.

Dean looks at him. "You alright?"

Sam shrugs. "Little tired."

Dean keeps looking at him.

Sam looks back and frowns, tries not to squint too obviously through his tired, dry eyes. "What?"

Dean sighs. He looks awkward, worried. "You shouldn't drive when you're tired, dude."

Sam shrugs. "Not like I have a choice."

"Sorr—"

"Not exactly your fault," he cuts over. He clenches his jaw against a yawn and rubs irritably at his eyebrow.

Dean sighs and looks back at the road. He moves his hand restlessly. His voice is low, blends with the rumble of the engine. "Strange, 'cause I know we were never big on the touchy feely crap. Hugging or whatever. But I just sorta. Wish I could, if I wanted to. Touch you. Or whatever." He mumbles it so quietly Sam feels like he can sense it more than hear it. He wants Dean's strong arms around him, big fierce hug like when he was seven and skinned his knee, so stupidly and strongly his chest hurts.

Sam's eyes burn with more than tiredness and he fixes his eyes on the smooth running white line in the middle of the road as they slide over the miles. "Yeah."

He thinks, then, for the first time—or at least the first time he lets himself consciously consider it—of what he could do. What he could try, what he owes to Dean to try, because this isn't fair. The thought of it working makes his insides knot up into something cold and dead, but he can't keep being selfish forever.

He calls Bobby when they stop at a gas station, walks around to the side of the shitty little off-white building and flips open his phone.

"Hey," he says. Bobby's gruff reply makes him feel a little better, a little grounded, for a moment. "Anything?"

Bobby sighs, crackles unpleasantly loud over the phone. "Not really. This is just—not something I think we can go down any regular channels with. You need to go higher, more powerful, but then you don't want to get into any messy territory like deals or exchanges or 'favors'," and Sam can hear the quotey fingers. "Gonna take a hell of a lot of—something. I'm not even sure I know what, son."

Sam pretty much knows, then, that it can't be fixed, that this sort of thing can't be fucked with; feels it settle with a sick sort of certainty. "Yeah, I know. Thanks, though. For looking, for helping. I really mean it. We're swinging back up by your way, so we'll see you."

He cuts the call and stares unseeing at the scrub-brush flat land stretching out to nothing.

\--

He doesn't know where Dean is, but he wasn't in the room from what Sam could see or sense when he woke up, and in the still South Dakota night that falls about Bobby's house like a blanket, Sam can't see or feel him anywhere out here either, as he piles up the wood in Bobby's yard. He hopes Dean stays gone, while he does this. He's pretty sure he couldn't do this with Dean anywhere near, any kind of reminder. He clings to the memory of the awkwardness of the past couple weeks; to the memory of Dean's face tight and unhappy as he watched Sam sew himself up, at his flickering and cursing as he tried so hard to just grip a gun in Mississippi. To how right this idea seemed out by the gas station when he realized he couldn't fix it the way he wanted.

He doesn't think about the fact he never let himself say any kind of goodbye. He just needs to do this—fast, like a Band-Aid, even if it'll be anything but painless after. He shakes his head and focuses on stacking the logs, bites his lip 'til it hurts.

He opens the door to Bobby's basement and stares down at the dark maw, the steps disappearing into the blackness. He tugs the string when he reaches the bottom; a lightbulb throws weak light over some of the room, the corners still hidden even more blackly now against the light, but the big white freezer chest gleams up at him.

He knows Dean's not dead, not really, not like a regular restless spirit, but maybe something's tying him here, because he died and Sam brought him back and of all the places he should be if things had always gone like they should, here on earth ain't top of the list. Sam brought him back, got back Dean and his body, like both were needed. And maybe—if he can free Dean by something so simple, he needs to try. He wants Dean with him, he does, wants him around so badly he feels like he can't live without him, can't go back to how it was alone, but—but he can't live like this either, can't live with feeling like he's cursed Dean into this through his own selfishness and stupidity.

He swallows as he opens the freezer and sees Dean's body still there, arranged amongst the frozen food, ice in his hair. He keeps taking deep breaths. The ice wasn't perfect, not the ideal preservative, and Dean looks—just _wrong_ , somehow, his skin a dull grey-blue, looks like it might slough off to the touch, and Sam's fingers twitch away as he makes himself reach in. His face doesn't look like Dean any more, even though the features are still there. He just looks off, like a badly made wax model, and Sam's stomach twists. He looks away from Dean's face and shoves his arms into the freezer, ignoring the burn of the ice as he hooks his hands around Dean's knees and shoulders. He's hard to carry, stiff and so cold, and Sam's terrified of dropping him, of snapping something, not that it would matter.

He thinks again and again—like a mantra to shut up the voices that clamor in him to stop in case it _does_ work—as he puts Dean's body on the pyre, that he has to try this, has to, that he's being selfish. Dean deserves a goddamn chance at peace, and how he is now—it's not peace. He can't do _anything_ , can't touch, sleep, eat, fuck—he can't even protect Sam. He just gets to stand by and watch, feeling useless, and for all Dean's sometimes been a mystery to Sam, Sam knows that those things there, those things he can't even try to do now, pretty much outlined Dean's purpose in life. And it's fucking unfair to expect Dean to live like that just because Sam thinks he can't live without his big brother.

Even if some mean part of Sam thinks he deserves it, after what he's been through, deserves to keep Dean, it's not fair, and Dean doesn't deserve to be tied to Sam forever just because Sam brought him back like this and couldn't make it right. He deserves some sort of closure to his messed-up life. And this could work.

He shakes salt over Dean, watches with a detached sort of fascination as the salt grains settle in the corners of his closed eyes, fall against his slack parted mouth, the drained, blue lips.

He splashes gasoline over Dean and the wood, needs this to go up fast and strong. It gleams sick and strange on Dean's skin, wetting and melting the ice still clinging to his hair and eyebrows.

Flames leap up shocking and bright when he chucks the match on, and it's like all his whirling thoughts are burned up with the blaze because he just stands and stares at the leaping orange fire. He can't even think, can't even feel regret or relief or dread or hope for what feels like an age but is probably only the first few painfully bright seconds of the fire as it eats up the gasoline greedily.

It's not as easy as it should be, but nothing ever is. The flames just eat up the gas, dancing above Dean's body at first, as he thaws but doesn't catch. Sam has to keep the fire going, not thinking about anything but getting it to burn; more gas to coax it along, more wood as the flames eat it up with pops and sparks and Dean's still—it takes a while, especially as the meltwater hisses and darkens the burning pyre.

He tries to arrange the wood around Dean as best he can, thinking back to Dad teaching them the best way to start and keep a fire going, how to position the wood so it'll catch from the tinder. As Dean's body starts to catch, he stares into the brightest part of the flames so he doesn't have to see the way Dean's body is blackening and melting and _burning_ just in front of him. His legs ache and when it seems to be going more steadily he sits cross-legged on the ground a few feet away and stares blankly into the fire.

The stench is stronger than Sam would have thought once it's going strong, cold flesh heating and burning up, a disgusting sickly sweet tang to the thick woody smoke which billows up blackly. Clouds of it rise into the sharp air, tiny sparks dancing up, the wood and Dean's cold dead flesh snapping, crackling as they burn. He watches and feels his stomach twist and roll sickly and can't move as terrifying emotion crashes back in, rushing as if to fill a vacuum. It's mainly terror, flattening everything else—fear for he doesn't even know what, right now. Fear that this would work. That it wouldn't. Fuck.

He sits for what could be hours, hands gripping into the cold hard-packed dirt ground, heart thumping and mind whirling until he settles into a sort of daze, waiting for something he doesn't even know.

When he blinks and looks properly at the fire again, it's calmed down, though it's still going strong and steady, shrinking blackened lump in the middle barely visible through the light and heat. Sam's face is stinging hot from sitting unmoving in front of the flames for so long, while his fingers are cold and achy. He doesn't know what to do now. How does he check if it worked, if Dean's gone? How should he feel? He fights the urge to wrap his arms around his knees and hide his face. He should feel relieved that he did it, gave Dean the chance, but he just feels a tense coldness in the center of his chest.

Dawn could be imminent, an almost-lightening of the dark sky along the eastern horizon, the sort of shift in color he could be imagining. He doesn't know how many hours he's been out here.

Ash is starting to settle about him, collecting on the ground like a morbid kind of snowfall, and he starts when he hears a voice behind him. His breath seizes in his lungs and he doesn't know if he's relieved or sad or terrified or what, he's tangled and so fucking lost.

He sucks in air, hot smoky air that smarts his throat, and turns, stands.

Dean's a few feet away, and the firelight from where Sam's burning his body flickers gold over his face, sending strange shadows across it. "It's a good thing that didn't work, 'cause otherwise I wouldn't be able to kick your ass for pulling that stunt. It might be difficult like this but I'm sure I can dredge up the strength."

He looks angry.

"I had to—try," starts Sam, and has to stop because— _Dean_. Everything else leaves him in a rush and all he can feel is a staggering sort of relief—a foolishness he ever thought he could live without Dean, a massive fucking surge of thanks that it didn't work. It's—fuck, everything else still stands, it's still pressed down somewhere, the guilt and fear—but god, Dean.

"Sorry," he chokes out. "Hi." He sits back down suddenly on the hard ground.

"Sam—" and Dean's crouching next to him. "You idiot. Told you that had nothing to do with me, anyway, that's not what's keeping me here. May as well salt and burn Ashcroft, though Bobby might be pissed."

"Dean," says Sam, not sure if he wants to laugh or cry. "I had to see. It isn't fair—you should have peace, be able to go on."

"Who fucking says I want to? Who gave you the right to decide that, anyway?" Dean swears, then sighs and stands up, stares into the flames. "Sam."

Sam struggles to his feet and stands next to Dean, has to stop himself from trying to lean in.

Dean rubs at the back of his neck, such a familiar gesture. "I get it, I do, I know you think this sucks—and it kinda does, sometimes I just want a fucking steak or some human touch—but you're forgetting what you did. Being back, even like this is—more than I could have hoped, alright? I know I never thanked you for it, not properly, but you did something pretty fucking amazing. I never expected out of that deal, I made my own peace with it, but being there—" he cuts himself off.

Sam bites his lip. Dean's never talked about what it was like—what hell was like, being a damned soul, and Sam's never wanted to ask him. He doesn't even know if that's out of a desire for Dean not to have to relive it, remember it more than he has to, or a selfish need not to have to go through knowing what it was like—the guilt and horror of knowing where Dean sent himself for Sam.

"Anyway." Dean shakes his head. "I wouldn't have cared if I'd come back as an ant or a fucking piece of trash, I'm fucking grateful to be out of there. Okay, Sam? I'm not in hell, I'm alive, and I'm with you which kinda counts for a lot. Someone needs to look out for you, man. I told you I wasn't done here, and if you think I'd rather be anywhere else than right here like this, even wherever the fuck you thought I was supposed to go if that worked," and he gestures at the dying flames around his own blackening skeleton, "you're dumber than you look, college boy."

Sam blinks and nods. "Alright."

Dean casts him a sharp look. "I mean it, don't go getting all emo on me just cause I can't feel the softness of grass on my fingertips or a breeze on my face or shit like that. Don't you ever dare think I'm arrogant and entitled enough to be unhappy with this."

Sam smiles a little and thinks he might start to believe it. "Alright," he says again. The ugly mess of feelings inside him settles, suddenly, and he realizes with complete clarity that he is actually happy, somewhere underneath that's finally breaking through. He has Dean, he saved Dean, and it's not perfect, but when is anything in their lives?

He wishes again that he could hug Dean—it feels like that sort of moment, but he swallows the need and lets it be enough when he meets Dean's gaze, eyes intense. Dean bites his lip and makes the effort to bump his shoulder against Sam's. Sam sways on his feet slightly at the gentle impact and smiles, feels it warm down through his body like Dean had wrapped his arms around Sam and squeezed.

\--

Bobby raises an eyebrow at the blackened, burnt remnant of Dean's pyre in his yard.

Sam fights the urge to scuff his feet against the earth. "Yeah. I thought it might—you know, like if it were tying him here? I know he's not a regular spirit but I just thought. Maybe he could get some peace."

"Because he's an idiot," offers Dean, who's walking back and forth through the pyre itself. He stops in the middle of it, looks down. "Hey, I think I can see my finger bones."

"That's not funny, Dean," says Bobby, but Sam's fighting his own smile. It really shouldn't be, but he's got a lightness rising in him and he thinks things might be okay. And no topic has ever really been off-limits for Winchester joking—graveyard humor taken to a whole other level.

Bobby shakes his head, adjusts his hat. "Boys. Clean it up, then." He looks to Sam. "We were gonna have to get rid of it at some point, anyway. That freezer was never more than a stopgap. If we do find a way—" and Sam shrugs at that. He can't even think that they might, because any kind of hope fucks up his acceptance of the now, and he's starting to realize the _now_ is pretty much the most important thing "—then I don't think Dean's original body would be that useful, anyway."

"I'll get it cleaned up. Sorry, Bobby. And thanks. Again."

Sam sweeps the ash and what solid bones are left into a bag. He feels oddly detached, like he should have some sort of emotional reaction over Dean's freaking physical remains, but he knows what Dean meant, now—that's not Dean. That's got nothing to do with Dean, he's all over _there_ , alive and thrumming and all _Dean_ , all his brother. He buries the bag anyway, feels weird about just chucking it into Bobby's trash. He buries it deep so Ashcroft won't be able to get down to it, but doesn't bother marking the spot.

Dean watches him. He's not looking at Sam's face when Sam turns to him, shaking dirt off his hands, and Sam unconsciously touches the amulet almost before he's even seen where Dean's looking. He fights the urge to tuck it back inside his shirt, feeling strangely self-conscious.

"Looks like you'll be hanging onto that, then," says Dean, and quirks his mouth as he looks back up at Sam.

"Yeah," says Sam. "I was totally lying before, anyway, it suits me way better than you." He does put it inside his shirt then, drops it under the collar, and tries not to jump at the fall of it against his skin, warmed from the fire and Sam's own body heat. For something that Sam got originally, that was his gift, it seems so shockingly _Dean_ to have around his own neck. He runs his fingers over the shape of it under his shirt one more time, catching Dean's eye for an odd moment, before dropping his hand and turning back to the dirt pile, packing it down with his foot.

\--

"Where now, then?" says Dean. "Another hunt lined up anywhere?"

"Nah," says Sam. He's sitting at Bobby's kitchen table cleaning out his favorite handgun, wrapping the oily rag around his fingers. He looks up at Dean. "And spit it out."

"What?"

"I know you're itching to tell me I'm doing something wrong, and as I'm pretty much going to be the one doing all the weapons upkeep from now on, tell me what it is before you explode from having to watch me do it on every gun we own." It's the kind of thought that should have a painful, sad sort of edge to it, but Sam's weirdly alright with it. He doesn't really give a shit if he has to do everything as long as Dean's there to bitch at him about it.

Dean looks pained. "Sorry, dude, but—" he leans forward and points. "You're missing that ridge. When you just rub it with the cloth, you don't get in there, if anything you just push more shit in there. You need to use the edge of your fingernail with the cloth—there you go," as Sam scrapes out a lump of old grease.

"See, now don't you feel better? And the guns'll thank you. Anyway. Nah, I'm not exactly in the mood to go chucking myself into another hunt, all research and fighting and danger and crap. I want to relax."

"Then what? Vacation time?"

Sam grins, shrugs. "There's a first for everything."

Dean grins back, looking slightly embarrassed. "You know when I said we should go to the Grand Canyon?"

Sam does, vividly, that strange moment of realizing that Dean never asks for anything like that of Sam, never does something he wants to just because he does—just for a vacation. "Yeah. You really want to go, then? Or would your prefer TJ?"

"Nah, TJ's no fun if I can't do body shots off of the stomach of some slutty girl whose name I don't even know. Let's go to Arizona."

"Alright. Let's give it a few days, though. Feel like I got run over by a truck these past couple days, man. Three hunts in that short a time is a lot even for us, and when you just get to hang around and watch me toil—dude. I need some fucking rest." Maybe it's too soon to kid about it, but—Dean smirks and flips him the bird and yeah, nothing's ever really too off-limits to add a bit of sarcasm to, for them. It's how they deal.

\--

They stay at Bobby's for about another week—Sam helps Bobby out where he can, feels a little guilty about the way they always seem to show up and cause a hell of a scene and often a lot of mess. He helps fix up some stuff Bobby can't really do on his own, sometimes tinkers with some of the cars out in the yard under Dean's extremely watchful eye.

Doesn't take long before Sam starts to get twitchy, though. For all he craved stability when he was younger, for all he clung to it at Stanford—when he's with Dean, he gets edgy whenever they're in one place too long. Being cooped up with Dean in one place is just—wrong, somehow. He and Dean, they fit on the road, next to each other on the worn smooth bench seat, watching the scenery slide by as fast as nameless motel after nameless motel.

Bobby shoos them out before Sam makes the decision to leave, anyway, saying they make the place look untidy, and Sam and Dean are both more than ready to be gone. However much they love Bobby, the dynamic of the three of them isn't really cut out for working over long periods of time. Bobby's place is more a check-in base than any kind of home.

The tension of the past weeks, the craziness of the past few days in particular, the surging emotions that Sam's more than ready to be done with—they all seem to slide off as he settles into the car, hands loose on the wheel, and feels the engine rumble steady underneath him. He shifts, settles further down into the seat.

"You're in a good mood." Dean sounds like he is, too.

Sam grins over. "Yeah, well, why not?"

The drive over is so different from the one back up from Mississippi—Sam feels almost giddy at how light the air seems without the crushing tension of before, sucks in great lungfuls of it while Dean looks at him oddly. It feels right again, finally. It's not exactly the same, never can be—almost more than anything else it feels wrong to be on this side of the car all the time, like that disconcerting feeling after you move your furniture around in a bedroom you'd gotten used to—but he's relearning life with Dean, a new way of being that they're gonna have to get used to, and he's okay. They're okay.

They take a quick break in Denver for the hell of it because it's one of the few cities they've never actually been to—nearby, they once hunted a Stuhać, a Slavic mountain demon, who was terrorizing a tiny town nestled in the foothills of the Rockies, but never actually in Denver—and Dean wants to do touristy things for the hell of it. So does Sam, if he's honest. He grins and takes the exit.

"What the fuck is there even to do in Denver, Dean?" says Sam as they wander along in front of the Denver City and County building, with its big open courtyard and impressive pillars. Sam cranes his head up. He's always loved grand old buildings like this, steeped in each town and city's history.

Dean grins. "Hey, reckon if you have sex in Denver you get to join the Mile High Club?"

Sam looks at him.

"You know—Mile High City," and Dean's grin starts to fade.

Sam can't keep his straight face and snorts. "Dude, I don't even know you. You be my guest if you wanna try it." He doesn't realize until after he's said it, then he winces and looks away, back.

"Yeah, I'll leave it to the corporeal types for now. Don't think the world is ready for my kinky, disembodied sex moves." Dean looks unconcerned.

"I don't think the world will ever want to be ready for those, Dean." Sam's sort of curious, though, now. "So, uh. You know. What's that—like? If you, like. Kinda. Uh."

"Being horny without a body?" Dean grins. "You can say it."

"Yeah."

"Not actually as bad as you'd think. It's like anything—I can remember what it was like, but I don't really feel it now. Not in a physical way, anyway, so it doesn't bother me. Can't really get blue balls if you've got no balls to start with, right?"

Sm winces. " _Dean_ , please."

"Hey, you asked for it."

Sam thinks over it as they walk. Thinks about what it must be like for Dean—getting horny, just without the physical side. Thinks about what arousal would feel like as _just_ emotion, can't wrap his head around it. He glances at Dean and wonders—what is it like? Is there any kind of release, an equivalent to an orgasm? Sam feels his face heat along his cheekbones and turns his head from Dean. He really shouldn't be fixating on this.

Sam drags Dean to the Denver Art Museum (in exchange for a promise they wouldn't spend more than two hours there and Dean would get to pick the bar that night). He's read about their collection of American Indian art and artifacts, and it's awesome. Sam feels the history of the country sweep over him in that epic, timeless way that he loves about museums—always makes everything else seem just that little bit less important.

He squints to read the information plaque next to each piece that catches his eye while Dean stands close and amuses himself scrunching his face up in effort and poking Sam in the shoulder, laughing when Sam reflexively shoves at him and his shoulder just pushes in. Sam's gotten less worried about being in public with Dean— if anyone sees that, or sees Dean's arm accidentally slide into the wall or through a barrier, no one's gonna believe their eyes enough to actually do anything about it. They've gotten pretty good at walking around, too, Dean close enough to Sam that he can follow the path a solid person would take and not accidentally forget and walk through shit, and he's learning the best ways to dodge and deflect to avoid anyone touching him, accidentally or no.

Even Dean's unwillingly impressed and excited about some of the depictions of old weapons and hunting, and Sam's fascinated by the hints of supernatural mythology and lore that show in the art that he recognizes from hunts and research. He sees legends, creatures represented in the artwork that they've _hunted_ before now—baykok, a death-spirit they'd come across once in Michigan, skinwalkers, wendigos. Legends they know, not some abstract concept in a museum like it is to all these other people milling around, mild interest in their faces—they've used this stuff, used it to save lives and kill evil. He feels the chasm between he and Dean and _others_ , normal people, but he feels sort of fond, now. It doesn't bubble up resentment in him like when he was young. They're living their normal lives over there, and yeah, he doesn't get that, but he gets his life, and he gets to know they all owe him theirs. He feels strangely omnipotent, looking around, though he's kind of glad to be brought back to earth with a bump when he trips over apparently nothing in the small cafe and spills coffee all down his pants leg.

Dean narrows his eyes in concentration, reaches his hand out and flicks a napkin over to Sam. "Clumsy."

Sam sets the half-empty coffee down. "Shut up, lazy bitch, I'm the one who carried it." It's kind of a thing between them, now, Sam calling Dean lazy or selfish because he does all the work. It's a sort of constant reminder, reassurance, they're both okay with it. That they can joke.

"You say the nicest things."

"It's only because I care, _darling_." Sam swipes irritably at his cooling wet jeans.

An elderly woman stops by their table at that and smiles fondly at them. Sam blinks at her.

"You make such a lovely couple. It's so nice to see young people like yourselves out together like this." She nods in approval and walks on.

Sam stares after her with an open mouth, and Dean makes him jump with a boom of a laugh. Sam can't help but grin at Dean's crinkled eyes and laughter.

"Your face, man. Genius. _Darling_." He sighs. "Whew, that felt good. Laughing is damn strange when you can't feel yourself doing it, but good."

Sam shakes his head. Dumb old lady.

They walk leisurely back to the motel as the sun sinks—the car's parked in the lot but they don't bother driving it around the city. It's kind of novel just to be able to walk and use public transport to get to places. Sam's forgotten how cities can feel—a little self-contained world, so different from the sprawling universe of back roads, small towns, motels and rest stops reaching up and down the country that they're used to.

\--

The bar's dark and smoky and exactly Dean's kind of place—and the house brew is good, rich and malty as Sam takes a long pull while Dean looks on wistfully. They take stools by the edge of the bar, and Dean closes his eyes and grins as Sam looks around, relaxing. Much as he'd resist admitting it, he feels comfortable in this sort of place, the familiar low light, sticky floors, rumble of chatter from the clumps of people around the room, the pool tables with their worn green felt. Only the wide selection of beers, liqueurs and spirits belie the fact it's a bar in the city, not a good ol' place out in the sticks.

"Good music," Dean says, as Zeppelin filters through from somewhere.

"What does it feel like? Music?"

Dean shrugs. "I dunno. I kinda—it feels like I can actually hear it, even though I know it's kind of different. It actually feels more," and he gestures at his chest, "more emotional, and I'll kick your ass somehow if you laugh. Like I'm feeling it more than hearing it, but I can hear it too, the beat and the words and stuff like I can hear anything. I dunno. Don't ask me how I can hear without actual ears, I'm just happy I can."

Sam grins. "Yeah, me too."

Dean stares down at the bar, bites his lip and picks up a beer mat. He flips it between his fingers for a second then drops it on the bar, crowing in triumph.

It seems a little easier, now—after Sam did the salt and burn, it's like the both of them are more satisfied that Dean's truly here. Dean's finding it easier to touch, to force presence; still nothing much beyond a few seconds, but it tires him less. He wouldn't spend so much time poking Sam just to annoy him if it didn't—though, actually, Sam knows that the effort a guy can exert with no other goal except to annoy his brother can be pretty huge. Or at least, it is between him and Dean. No plan is too big to execute if it'll piss off the other. He grins, caught up in memories of pranks gone by until Dean pokes him again.

Sam, for his part, has let go of that cold crushing fear when Dean flickers and fades out—he does it more often now, sometimes because it's easier for him to be invisible, sometimes he just likes to let go and be. Sam can sense him around even when he can't see him, can feel Dean in some way he can't figure out with any of his five senses but _knows_. It doesn't worry him anymore that Dean might just float off, disintegrate, pass on, whatever. He knows Dean'll come back to him, and he always does, fuzzes and flickers back next to him with a soft smile.

Dean right now is frowning as he pokes Sam again, harder. "Quit drifting off, I'm bored," he demands.

Sam opens his mouth on a smirk to call Dean a needy attention whore, then stops when a chick steps up to them, leans her hip on the bar.

"Hi," she says. She's pretty, in a soft, roundfaced sort of way, long dark hair and red lips. "You guys are new faces here, huh?"

Sam's sort of taken by surprise. He kind of forgets, stupidly, that however separate he feels from normal people sometimes, they can still—still _see_ him, talk to him. He's just another guy, to them. _I could have turned into something that would've ripped your intestines from your body_ , he thinks, but instead he says, "Yeah, yeah, just passing through, thought this looked like a nice place to chill out, have a beer, you know? I'm Sam, this—this is Dean." Dean raises his eyebrows and nods in greeting.

"Hiya," she says. "I'm Sharon. What are you doing up in Denver?"

He can't quite tell if she's hitting on him, or Dean, or neither, or both, but he can't sense anything weird about her—just friendly conversation. He relaxes, takes a long pull of his beer; he's had a couple now, and though he's nowhere near drunk—guy his size, he needs a pretty hefty amount of alcohol to get really, truly hammered, a fact he lamented when broke in college—he's got a nice buzz going.

"On a roadtrip—heading down to the Grand Canyon. Just here for the night."

"Aw, you should stay longer, I promise you can have just as much fun here in Denver."

Dean returns her flirty smile. "That so? What do you guys do for fun around here?"

"Well, there's a great nightlife—did you know Denver's been voted best American city for singles three years in a row?" Her eyes sparkle, and Dean laughs.

"That I did not know."

"Anyway, who needs the Grand Canyon when all you need for scenery here is just to look around."

Sam nods—she kinda has a point. The Rockies rising dusky blue almost all around them are stunning, and Sam's found himself just stopping and staring a couple times since they got into the city. "They're something, alright," he says.

She looks proud. "Lived here my whole life, been camping on those mountains more times than I can count." She looks wistful for a moment, then looks at him again, all flirty again. "Shall I get the next round, gentlemen?"

Sam raises his nearly full beer. "I'm alright for now, but thanks."

She looks to Dean. "Can I—?"

"Teetotal," replies Dean, deadpan.

Sam bites his lip to keep back a snort.

They chat for a while, and it becomes clear she's zeroing in on Dean. She reaches over to put her hand on his arm at one point, and he twitches away, and he keeps shuffling towards Sam the further towards him she leans. Sam's torn between awkwardness and amusement, though he feels bad when Dean moves back quickly. "I gotta go," he says. He adds in a low voice to Sam, "I'll wait for you outside, dude."

Sharon looks kind of hurt when Dean walks quickly out.

Sam makes an abortive gesture. "You, uh—don't worry. You're not his type," he says with an apologetic shrug, looking over to make sure Dean gets out of the bar okay. Dean slips out of the open door left by an entering couple, and Sam looks back at Sharon.

She's fixing him with an assessing look. "Yeah." She looks over at the open door of the bar then back at Sam, looks him up and down. "I can see that."

Sam raises his eyebrows at her.

She shrugs. "Have a nice night, alright? You boys enjoy your stay in Denver." She walks away, and Sam shakes his head. What is it with people recently? They always got it, the assumption, but recently—man. It's just how they are at the moment, he guesses, the way Dean sticks close, the way Sam has to watch him more closely, make sure no one tries to walk into him or anything. And just—you know. To remind himself Dean's here. Back. Sam got him. It's nice to glance over and realize it all over again.

He downs the last of his beer and heads out.

He can't see Dean when he gets outside, but he doesn't worry—he just starts walking, and after a couple moments he can feel Dean around. Few minutes later and Dean coalesces next to him.

"Man, I once told myself that the day I have to turn down hot girls hitting on me is the day I shoot myself," he mourns, but he doesn't sound too pissed. "And now I can't even do that." He grins at Sam, though.

Sam breathes in the cool air, likes how it clears the slight muzziness from the beer and smoky air of the bar. "Speaking of dying," he starts. He doesn't know why he's bringing this up now, but he's been thinking about it.

"Which is always a great way to start a conversation."

"When—how will you die? You know. If you don't have a body." He doesn't like to think that Dean can't die—he knows full well that immortality would be its own horrendous curse—but he can't deal with the reality that Dean will die at some point right now. He can't imagine being without Dean, now, especially as he's come way too close to losing him recently. He doesn't think he can go through that again. A selfish, young part of him hopes it'll be him to die first this time around, whenever it comes.

Dean shrugs, quiet for a moment. "I figure—it'll just be my time one day. When I'm done, once and for all, I'll just pass on, or whatever. Like—remember that Molly chick? When she was ready. With nothing left. Don't reckon it'll be for a while, though. For me."

"Good," says Sam. He wants a long while, yet. Forever, hopefully, at least their forever.

"Head on out tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Not actually that much to do in Denver after all."

\--

Sam dreams, that night, heady, rich dreams. He dreams of Sharon, of her dark hair tumbling over her shoulder, her lithe curvy body, her generous breasts spilling over his hands, so pale against his darker skin.

Except they're not his hands—they're Dean's. Dean's fucking Sharon, slow and steady, and he's beautiful, he's strong and alive and his back arches, muscles shifting under the gold stretch of his skin, patchwork of freckles and old scars. His mouth is red and open, and his eyelashes lie dark on his cheekbones.

Sam realizes, in that clear dream-certain way free of normal inhibitions, restrictions, _taboos_ , that Dean is incredible. Dean's stunning, so fucking hot, and something breaks through inside Sam and he wants Dean for a moment so fierce it wakes him up—shocked awake and hard, cock wet at the head, sticking to his boxers.

His thoughts whirl blankly, dream-thoughts and awake, and the feeling that lingers over both, of _Dean_ , stays with him. His toes curl in the sheets and his eyes make out shapes in the dim room—and then he can see Dean, watching him.

He sees, suddenly, Dean arching in pleasure, lingering dream-picture, then catches Dean's eyes now, fixed on him, strip of Dean's face lit in the orange streetlight slicing through the curtains. The images meld and he thinks of this Dean arched over him, lines and edges and light and shadows painted in pure sex, and his cock jumps.

He breathes fast and can't look away, and neither of them move or speak as Sam moves to grip his cock. He thinks for a crazy moment that Dean might step over to the bed, to push back the sheets and touch Sam, but then he remembers Dean can't.

He moves his own hand, then, slides his fingers over his aching cock as his breath hitches. It feels so fucking good, and he's still watching Dean, and fuck, how can Dean's eyes be burning him up so much if it's not even real, just a projection? Sam feels the energy of emotion pushing out from Dean, of something so strong and present it looks as though he's almost glowing at the edges, suffused with something.

Sam's hand slips over his cock in the precome leaking, and his hips rise up in helpless little thrusts. "Fuck," he says, can't help it, needs to give voice to the want crashing up from his chest, " _fuck_ ," and it's like the breaking of the silence breaks the spell.

Dean looks away and Sam hears him make a choked noise, and he fades and flicks out and in and disappears. But Sam can still feel him here, knows he hasn't gone—can still see and hear Sam, and Sam lets himself groan loud this time as he presses his thumb hard over the swollen head of his cock. He grasps for the amulet with his other hand, feels a jolt all over—head and chest and cock—as his fingers bump over it, grabs it so tight he feels like he's imprinting it on his palm. He can feel the cord pulled tight against the back of his neck as he grips it, thin band of pressure. He gasps, squeezes the head of his cock, thumb and index finger a tight ring sliding over the ridge of his cockhead, and comes with a hot rush against his palm.

His heart thuds in his chest, heavy fast rhythm, and he trembles. He senses Dean, still, near, and he knows Dean's feeling _something_ so strong, can feel the air thrumming with it, before it fades, distances. Sam swallows down panic as he senses Dean leave, knows it's not—nothing forever, just like leaving a room. Or like running from it. He's still scared.

He closes his eyes and takes deep breaths, feels the pleasure wash through him, relaxing and warm and strange, because—all this, all about _Dean_ , Dean who'd always been everything to him, making him feel like this—and Dean feeling like that, like those tendrils of sensation Sam had been able to grasp from Dean, all because of Sam.

He doesn't know whether to rationalize it—a guy has needs, and he hasn't had any privacy lately, Dean always there (which Sam doesn't mind, wants him always there)—or to give in to the crashing sort of way things seem to fit into place.

He doesn't feel dirty, knows he should. It feels like the answer to some strange riddle he hadn't even known he was trying to figure out, like an old half-remembered question suddenly answered. All his thoughts, swirling emotions about Dean, about his future, about girls, about sex, about what he wants— _Dean_ is the answer that makes things work, and though it makes things more complicated, god, it makes them clearer. He wants Dean, in every way he can have him, can't even tell how long he's felt like this now he sees it.

But this—he can't have this, he shouldn't and he _can't_ , there's no way around any of the very real obstacles to this. He can just act like it was nothing, an error in judgment, a dream and a mistake, something he can laugh at. _Guess I really do need to get laid_ , and Dean will laugh and they'll go on.

Sam curls his hand into a fist, and closes his eyes and pretends it hasn't happened, like he can unthink it, even as the aftershocks shake pleasantly through his limbs. He feels Dean come back, later, as the sky pales outside, and eventually he sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

Two days later, and they're on the South Rim, watching the sun start its slow descent. They watch the sunlight lengthening, color deepening so rich everything seems suffused with it, like Sam could swipe his fingers through the air and bring them to his face smeared orangey and blue.

  


It's exactly what they needed, this break. They're together and pretty much happy and the canyon is breathtaking, and Dean's grinning into the sun like a kid on a school trip.

It's probably a little clichéd to feel the peace settle inside him from just being around something so timeless—Sam feels a little like he's reading from one of the leaflets on the desk at the Visitor's Center, but there's a certain truth in what they say. He looks out over the landscape, thinks about the inexorable force of nature—wind and rivers and rain—carving out its mark on the surface of the earth, human troubles skittering harmlessly over and around.

Even _their_ troubles, past and present and whatever the future might throw at them, seem suddenly irrelevant—apocalypse and demons and hellfire, things people couldn't dream of, yet Sam can imagine this place staying unchanged through anything unleashed on it. The rocks and river and miles would stretch out untouched no matter what.

It's almost scary, in some ancient, untouchable way, creeping uneasily under the calmness—so many lives flitting over this place, so many that come and see and move on, and nothing in any of those lives does a thing to change this place. What point is anything, what point is each flash-short little life in the face of such size, space, presence that stays so unaffected?

Sam puts his hand on the rail and watches Dean instead, for a moment, feels almost dizzy at the way his focus crashes down from something so huge and ancient to the pinpoint of _Dean_. That's the point, he guesses—whether you leave an impression or not on anything that might _stay_ , you live your life best you can while you're in it, with what you have. Who you have.

"Reckon if you drop a penny off here, you could kill someone at the bottom, like with the Empire State building?" says Dean.

Sam grins. "If we had any pennies and you reckon you could aim well enough if there _were_ anyone down there, I'd let you try."

Dean hums quietly. Low sunlight paints over his face, lights on his eyelashes, though only Sam's shadow stretches long and strange on the rock behind.

"Makes you feel all—humble, and shit, doesn't it."

Sam nods, looks back out, and it's less scary this time, just beautiful. The distances are incredible, Sam hardly able to comprehend what he's seeing. The chasms down, the plunging striped rock sinking down to the darkening canyon floor, glint of water, long shadows. The stretching impossible miles across to the other side, a gaping gouge in the ground, layers of color revealed in the exposed flesh of the earth.

Dean flickers next to him, closes his eyes and fades away completely with a sigh. Sam can feel Dean sort of _spread out_ , feels like all the huge space of air around is full of him—as big and impossible as the canyon, part of the landscape of Sam's life like the grooves the river has left in this earth—deep and forever. Sam can no more fill in the space he's carved out for Dean than he could the thousands of feet deep gorge below him, and it's terrifying and amazing all at once. Sam closes his eyes and pretends like he can be part of the air like Dean is, like he and Dean are more than bodies and boundaries, can just _be_.

He doesn't know how long it is till he opens his eyes, but the sun's still up, swollen and red and sinking towards the horizon like it can't hold up its own weight.

Dean's next to him, looks calm. "That was all very Zen," he says quietly.

Sam hmms.

"Sam—" starts Dean, then shakes his head. He sighs. "You'd tell me, you know, if you wanted to do something else, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know you're kinda stuck with me like this. Can't really do much on my own. And hunting was never your gig, really. If you wanted—some other life, maybe, I could help. Maybe see if I could live with Bobby, or figure something out. You could go back to school or whatever you want to do. Find—you know. Someone, maybe, someday."

Sam opens his mouth, but can't even think of what to say.

Dean nods. "I guess we should start doing that, huh? Figuring out how I can live on my own, not trailing you around. I'm getting better, anyway, maybe I could—"

"Dean, shut the _fuck_ up."

Dean turns, looks surprised. Sam's starting to see how he can _feel_ Dean's emotions somewhere deep, as much as he can see them from Dean's image.

He sighs. "I've gone over this, Dean. I said I was going to save you, and I meant it, and I didn't mean I was going to run off afterwards. I didn't mean I wanted to save you and have you _and_ have a normal life. The appeal of that's kind of dulled by now, alright? I never fit there as well as I thought I would, anyway. I told you that."

Dean blinks. "Sam—"

But Sam holds up a hand.

"Nuh-uh. Let me." He looks down, scratches off a little of the paint from the railing. "I'm not going anywhere, not leaving this time, alright. I promise, and fuck you if you think I'm sacrificing anything." He smiles out in the dusk that's spreading out through the air like oil smooth over water. "If you think I'd rather be anywhere than right here, you're dumber than you look."

Dean's quiet for a long while. The sun sinks faster once it touches the edge, and the darkness spreads in the canyon fast, black shadows filling it up like ink poured into a well.

"Alright," says Dean quietly after it gets dark enough that Sam can hardly see the opposite side. "Guess we're even, huh?" He smiles.

Sam shrugs. "You and me, okay? Come on, let's go back. I'm tired."

\--

They're not camping, Sam deciding he can't be bothered dealing with tents and camping shit all by himself, so they're in the Thunderbird Lodge. It's like any other motel, in a way, though a little nicer and just happening to have views of the Grand Canyon outside the window. Sam sleeps deep at first, the thin air tiring, but he wakes after a few hours, blinking into the dark.

He can't tell what woke him up until he hears it again—"Sam."

He rubs his eyes and looks over, sees Dean sitting in the chair closest to his bed, eyes strange glints in the gloom. " _Sam_ ," he says again, a strange urgency in his voice, then he fades, already blurred outlines in the dark smearing further against the shadows until the chair's empty.

Sam remembers, of course, Dean watching him in Denver; remembers feeling Dean right there in the room as he'd jerked off, sensing Dean watching him as he'd stroked his cock, as he'd come. He hasn't been able to push it away, the heat of it licking up against his skin, the crash of realization with every glance Dean has thrown at him in the couple days since.

They hadn't talked about it the day after, not even the slightest acknowledgement, not a word or a look, had just gotten in the car with only slightly stilted conversation and driven away from Denver, leaving the crowning peaks of the Rockies around the city behind them.

But there's a tension between them, and Sam knows Dean's felt it too; knows Dean hasn't brushed it off as just an accident, a dream, a mistake in judgment. Knows it from the way Dean glances at him, the way he had faded away and drifted off before Sam had gotten into bed in the nights afterwards, even if they hadn't made any mention of it.

Now—now Dean's close, Sam can knows, can almost sense him so near. "Dean," he says, echoing Dean's urgency, and then he gasps loud in the still room as he _feels_ Dean almost like a touch, feels him rush in so close and sudden.

He can't help but jerk, his body jolting with a shock of nerves that sends adrenaline humming through him—cresting wave of fear, hope, anticipation.

"Dean," he says into the air, and he feels his cock stir, harden between his legs. His skin feels sensitized all over—the touch of sheets against his skin, the whisper of air, of clothes, and he wants to beg to be touched, _fuck_. He can sense Dean around him, close and almost terrifyingly intimate, even _more_ than if Dean had been fucking— _naked_ against him. It's heady and strange.

He can feel Dean's _yes_ as strong as if he'd whispered it—can almost hear it, breathless " _yeah, do it_ " in his ear—and he spreads his legs under the sheets as his cock lifts and aches.

He moves his hand, even the movement of his own skin against himself tingling and arousing—fingers dragging over his hip to touch his cock. He groans at just the brush of his fingers like he's fourteen all over again and desperate.

He used to love making Jess touch herself while he watched, found it unbelievably hot, and she'd loved it—he knows, suddenly, what it's like from the other side, now, the shocking pleasure of having someone _watch_. He can feel Dean still so close, _drinking_ it in, watching greedily; he knows Dean won't miss a single shift of muscle, the quietest sigh or moan. It makes Sam feel crazy, wanted—makes his cock strain up towards his belly before he's barely even touched it, makes his gut tighten hot, makes him forget how fucked up this is and pushes him forward blindly with how _good_ it is.

He fists one hand in the sheet and pulls it off, gasps as it catches against his cock, the slight pull and drag of movement and friction making his hips shift up.

He wraps his fingers around, strokes _slow_ and smooth, twists his hand around his cockhead already wet, and smoothes precome slick down the length of his dick. It feels big and obscene and dirty, curving up from between Sam's spread legs where he lies all exposed for Dean.

Dean's emotion wraps close around him, something that butts up against him like a breeze, an echo of what it must be like for Dean, intense and spiraling around with his own desire. He can get a glimpse of what it feels like, what need and arousal are like couched only in _emotion_ , not the physical—crazy white-hot pressure, love, _want_ , something Sam can't imagine feeling fully in his own body, like he might explode from it all.

His fist moves faster, and he lets himself enjoy this, revel in his cock slipping fat through his fingers, the slick heat of it rolling under the pads of his fingers, how _good_ it feels to push his hips up and have his cock slip into tightness, movement.

"Dean," he says into the air, even though he feels ridiculous, even as he's embarrassed by the hitching catch to his voice—"for you, yeah, doing—feeling it for you, _feeling_ it," and his balls tighten up with delicious pressure, and he can almost taste it in the back of his throat, can almost feel the rushing burst of orgasm. He makes it last, spins the pleasure out. The pulling ache drags in his belly, tightening, and his muscles all tense up and he makes himself sense every fucking second, track every tiny thing that's happening in his body. His thighs shake, his hips push up up up, his toes curl hard and _oh_ , it's _there_ , here, happening.

He groans out Dean's name; it rasps in his throat and his eyes ache as he squeezes them tightly shut, and he feels every moment of his orgasm as it hits, come rushing up his cock, the aching pushing _relief_ that snaps his hips up once, twice more as ropes of come splatter on him—warm, wet strings landing on his chest, smearing over his fingers as he jerks out the last spurts.

He feels dizzy, like he's not quite fully conscious, hanging in some flickering limbo of pleasure. He comes down slow, groans quiet and low in his throat at the hot ache in his limbs, the way his legs are weak and almost feel hollowed out from the inside with the force of his orgasm, the little jumps in his belly and lazy slow twitches in his cock. He senses Dean almost _enveloping_ him, the feeling of _Dean_ rising around him as his orgasm-rush fades, and it's—god, it's almost as though he can hear Dean's panting, feel his body tremble against Sam's.

Sam's strangely calm, knows he should be starting to freak out—and maybe it's waiting just out of reach, but right now he just feels good. All the reasons he can't have this are still there, but this—this feels like having it. He can't, he can't, but he _is_ , so maybe all those reasons aren't as important as he thought because—this is happening, _has_ happened, so far from a mistake or a lapse, this time. _This so so fucked up_ , he thinks, almost detachedly, _so so fucked up_ , and somehow not knowing whether it's more the fact Dean's his brother or the fact Dean's a ghost that makes this more fucked up makes him feel better about both.

He shivers suddenly, and Dean coalesces slowly back on the chair. It takes a few tries before he stays there, before his outline stays true, like he can't get it together enough to keep himself in his image. The thought makes Sam swallow, gives him a strange rush. _I did that_ , he thinks abruptly.

He feels weird and open suddenly, flat on his back, legs spread, come sticky and cold all over his chest and hands. Dean looks at him and he draws his legs together, wipes his hand awkwardly on his chest, and Dean's eyes flick down to his come-streaked skin.

"Sam," he says roughly, then nothing more as Sam grabs a t-shirt from the floor and wipes himself off, draws the sheets back over himself.

He meets Dean's eyes and doesn't know what to say.

Dean looks away, down at the floor, over at the door, back at Sam, restless. "Still sure you don't wanna run off? Get that normal life," and Sam feels Dean's sudden rush of terror even as his face stays blank.

Sam's eyes widen and he sees Dean frown in irritation.

"You're getting worse at hiding things," says Sam, and tries to smile.

"Yeah, well, it's harder like this."

And it's getting easier for Sam to understand Dean like this, so easy to feel his emotions instead of trying to read them from his image like before.

Sam shakes his head. "Already said, anyway, didn't I? You and me."

"Sam, this—"

"—is really fucked up. I get it. It fits, though, doesn't it?"

Dean frowns. "I don't—"

"If we had to find—" he waves his hand in the air vaguely in an attempt to incorporate him and Dean and this strange thing between them, " _this_ , it _would_ have to be through non-corporeal incest."

Dean groans, rubs at his forehead. "Don't put it like that."

Sam can't help but laugh. "We're fucking ridiculous."

"Yeah."

\--

They hike a little way down into the canyon the next day—not all the way down to the river, just to get a little deeper into the gorge, to see more, to be part of it. To do something physical and tiring that _doesn't_ have to do with a hunt or training for once, just because they want to. It's not hot like it would be in the height of summer, but it's far from cool, air warm and dry, and it's strenuous going. Sweat mats Sam's bangs to his head, drips sharp in his eyes.

"What, uh." Sam makes a vague gesture.

"What, what?" says Dean, smirking as he walks through a rock Sam scrambles over.

"What's it like? What was it like? Last night?"

They hadn't talked about it that morning, but there's none of the tension like after Denver—only the good kind. A smirk here, flush there, the heady newness of this _thing_ , a deep wellspring of want in Sam, so strong that he's kind of scared to think about how long it's been festering in him.

Dean twists to look over to the other side of the canyon, and the back of his neck's red, and more than that, Sam can feel the mix of lingering pleasure and embarrassment bleeding from him.

"Uh, interesting. I don't really, you know, c—uh—"

"You saw me come twice now, I think you can say it," says Sam, even as he feels heat creep up his own neck and bloom over his cheekbones.

Dean laughs. "Yeah. Come. It feels crazy intense, like every feeling ever all rolled up tighter in this _rush_ , like an explosion, but it doesn't build-release and then it's gone, like I remember, it's different. It just grows and it's like _pressure_ and then it doesn't just," and he makes a flicking motion with his hand, "and go, it stays and then it just fades a bit so I don't feel like I'm going to explode and just never be able to get myself back together."

Sam swallows, and tries not to get hard, knows he's fighting a losing battle as Dean looks direct at him and Sam can't help a rush of memory from last night, of what he felt pushing out from Dean in hot waves.

"It sounds kinda—"

They hear a laugh echo on the air round the bend of the trail and Sam abruptly shuts up. A couple push past some overhanging branches, coming past them the opposite way on the trail.

"Morning," says the guy brightly. Sam greets him back.

His eyes flick from Sam—sweaty, flushed and panting—to Dean standing unconcerned and neat just behind him on the narrow path. The girl giggles. "I think your friend needs a break," she says with a smile to Dean.

Dean grins, delighted. "I know, I was about to make him stop. He tries so hard to keep up, but he just doesn't have my stamina." He winks and the guy frowns slightly as they move past, closing his hand around his girlfriend's arm and pulling her gently along as she waves back.

Dean busts out laughing soon as they're a few strides away.

"Jerk," says Sam, and wipes his hair out of his eyes again.

\--

They head down to Phoenix the next day, for no real reason—they have no particular destination in mind, no hunts. It's a freeing sort of sensation, but Sam tries not to feel lost at the same time. There's nowhere to aim for, nothing hurtling towards them, no deadline or destiny or monster at their backs or _anything_ for them to think about apart from wherever the fuck they want to go, whatever hunt they might stumble across. It seems like it's the first time in his life he's ever really felt like this. Unmoored. When he was a kid, there was always that sensation of heading towards _something_ , even if it was just the end of childhood, adolescence, school, the constant breakneck journey of growing up. In Stanford, he was working towards his future, towards his own carved-out place in a world he made for himself—after it was torn away, he was working toward revenge, the trail of Azazel, then there was Dean's deal filling every inch of his horizon like rainclouds, full and ready to split, no way out from underneath.

Now there's just—whatever was left now that's all over. Life, and Dean, and whatever they want to do with it. It's strange, and he feels a little like he's finding his way in the dark, hands out and searching; unmapped in a strange country. This—this _whatever-it-is_ with Dean isn't helping. He's adrift, off the path, and it could be terrifying, and yet it's all somehow pretty amazing.

Near Sedona, Sam pulls the car into a gas station, tops her up as Dean bitches about the price of gas, then fades off somewhere as Sam fills the tank all the way up and goes to pay.

He taps his fingers on the car roof for a few moments when he gets back until Dean materializes back inside the car. Sam swings himself in with a grin and pulls out.

"You're quiet," says Sam.

Dean shrugs. "See that attendant? At the station?"

Sam had—pimply youth, too-long hair and sullen expression.

"I tried possessing him," says Dean off-handedly.

Sam tries not to let his twitch of surprise swerve them off the road. "You _what_?"

"Possessed him. I dunno, I was curious, whatever."

"What happened?"

"It—I dunno. I could—" Dean swallows. "I could _feel_ things, you know? I was pretty sure he couldn't tell, didn't react physically, and I didn't see if I could—do anything. I wouldn't, you know?" He shakes his head jerkily, like he's convincing himself, and Sam can see from the way he blinks rapid a couple times—and can just _know_ , feel in that way he's learning—how Dean's freaked out, a little or more than a little, at the thought that he could've taken over someone's body, like a demon, like something evil and selfish that Dean was scared out of his mind of becoming.

 _Don't worry_ , Sam wants to say, _you didn't do anything wrong. You're not the same as a demon, I promise_ , but he doesn't want to sound like a patronizing asshole. He says, "I know," instead, hope Dean gets it enough.

He bites his lip, glances back at Dean. "What could you feel?"

"Everything. Like I was him, physically. It was—kind of like being back, except I knew it wasn't mine, knew I didn't really belong there. But I could feel shit—like the smell of the gas, a bruise he had on his shin, when he scratched his neck. I could physically feel it, dude. It was weird. So fucking weird, after this long."

Sam blinks. "Could you do that with—anyone, you reckon? Possess them and feel things?

Dean shrugs. "I guess so."

Sam bites his lip again, can't help the thought. He looks over at Dean, doesn't know if this is too weird, even for them, but he wants, _wants_ to try this, hot and sudden, wants to give this to Dean.

Dean's looking back, though, and tension rockets up between them like a light's been flicked on. It floods the air and Sam feels heat splash over his face, tingle down into his chest, and his heart jumps with a kick-start, and he's pulling off the side of the road before he knows. It's a back road, and there's a shadowed space set back from the road a little with a sparse grove of trees planted in the dusty earth—but it's, god, still open and public. The road's empty but for them, though, and Sam can't fucking wait to get _in_ anywhere, needs this now—his cock swelling fast in his jeans, bulge pushing up and he presses the heel of his hand down on it as he yanks off the ignition with the other and scrabbles at his seatbelt, at his fly.

The car shudders and stops, starts to tick as it cools. Sam tugs at his zipper, pushes his hips forwards and spreads his legs wide, jeans pulling across his thighs and hips as he shoves them open and down just enough to pull his cock out.

"Sam," says Dean, then fades, sharp and quick like a switch being turned off. Except he's still here, presence strong as any image, still all around in the close air of the car and then god, all around _Sam_. He feels Dean close and hot, so close, close and Dean sinks in, wraps around Sam from the inside. It doesn't feel any different, physically, and it's only because Sam's attuned to the shape and feel of Dean's emotions that he can feel them sink into and bump up against his own, but _god_ , it makes his head feel thick and dizzy with it, makes his cock leak and jump as he cups it.

He rubs his thumb along the vein on the upstroke, rolls his balls in his other hand and presses a finger just behind, groans as he pulls in firm long strokes how he likes best. His whole body thrums with pleasure and the knowledge that Dean feels this too— _feels_ every rub of skin on skin, every shocky rush of pleasure that tightens his balls, the warm slow leak of precome making his strokes slippery and amazing. It's weird, so weird but so good, touching Dean in the only way he can, some insane mix of jerking off and a handjob; Dean is warm and strong in every inch of him, so familiar that Sam half-thinks he can smell the tang of leather and fresh sweat that was everything Dean.

He won't last long, oh god, not like this, not knowing he's touching Dean, that this is the first time Dean's felt anything like this since— _since_. He heaves in great deep breaths like he's been running miles, and his chest aches with it.

"Oh god, god, god, _Dean_ ," he says mindlessly, words and Dean's name, all he really knows right now, tumbling from his lips quiet as he can; he knows Dean can feel the shape of his mouth saying his name, can feel everything Sam does right now. His hips fuck up into the air, and he slams his head back, neck arced over the back of the seat.

He clenches his jaw on a yell, wary of the road close by, of the way sound carries in the still Arizona fall air, his throat aching with keeping it all in. His hand moves faster and faster as his whole body tenses; he squeezes his balls gentle in his other hand and _god_ , he's close. His hips buck up wildly and his toes cramp in his boots; his thighs press up against the steering wheel as he lifts up clear off the seat with a cry that hurts his throat, something that sounds like it could be _Dean_ if he'd let the scream past his tight-pressed lips. He comes, feels it pulsing slick from his cock, knows Dean can feel every wet, hot second, come smearing on his fingers, falling on his bared hip.

\--

Sam showers when they get to a motel a couple hours after, almost reluctantly washing the salt-musk smell of his own come off him, smell that had had him half-hard on the drive after; close and dirty and intoxicating in the warm stuffy car, the still-hot fall air hanging thick doing nothing to wash it away even with the windows cracked.

Dean had stayed in him, for a while, Sam letting Dean feel him grip the steering wheel, the rumble of the engine, and Sam had wanted to keep him in. He didn't quite want to look at Dean, for some reason, couldn't quite imagine looking in his eyes, saying something, even if that was totally contrary because Dean being _in_ him like that was way more intimate, no barriers or anything, but—but it just seemed easier that way. No need to have any kind of talk when they were wrapped up in some strange, deep, internal sort of way—no need to hash out what they felt when they just knew it.

Dean's pacing in the motel room, himself again, and Sam can't help but grin a little when he looks at him now.

Dean raises his eyebrows. "Hey, Sammy."

Sam opens his laptop at the table in the corner, flicks on the lights, flooding the motel room with a familiar weak glow as the day fades outside. "Bobby emailed me a couple days ago—there's a job he thinks is worth investigating, something like a demon in some L.A. suburb except its patterns seem older, different somehow—not your typical demon, I think it's a different sort of mythology, an older religion, something ancient, but with similarities. Just squatting down somewhere and carrying on low-level havoc. Regular demon tricks, looks like possessions and making people do bad things, murder and steal, except there's some seriously nasty stuff, inventive murders and savage attacks, stuff out of some of the more imaginative horror movies, strangely ritualistic but without an obvious common denominator."

Dean's looking at him. "And?"

"And I think we should check it out. We're kinda demon specialists by now, even if we never really planned to be, right? It sounds interesting, and there's more: Bobby says he's heard that Tamara took out something similar a couple months ago, and Caleb a year or two before that, both on the East Coast, similar behavior and patterns, though on a smaller scale. Looks like they could be copycat demons or maybe even conduits of the main demon." Sam opens a new tab in his browser, opens the links Bobby sent, sees if he can plug anything else into a search engine. "I need to find out what links the attacks—random, or if they're all an homage to something, or a copycat of certain specific real, or maybe fictional, events—" Sam trails off as he clicks around, drags a pad of paper from his bag. This has always been his favorite part of the hunt—the rush of research, of connections and ideas and solutions. It feels like the right time to get back into something, anyway.

He looks up from scribbling things down to see Dean watching him.

"This what you want, then, Sammy? Get back into it? You still got options, you know. I can tag along for—whatever. Where you wanna go."

Sam looks back at the screen. He think about going back to school, about settling down; about _saving people, hunting things_ , about driving the country with Dean and taking hunts where they see them, where they want, mapping out their own trail.

"Yeah, it is."

\--

Dean makes Sam go out for dinner before he gives himself a headache staring at the screen. They sit at a table for two, and Dean tells the waitress he's on a diet when she asks to take his order. "Yeah, it's this new thing—only Japanese avocadoes and sparkling pineapple juice."

"We, uh, I don't think we have any—"

"No, no, that's fine."

Sam forces a straight face as he orders the steak.

"Want a taste?" he says offhandedly when it arrives, spearing a piece on his fork.

"Oh yeah, fuck," says Dean with almost more enthusiasm he'd shown for the jerking off idea, and glances around before disappearing. Sam feels him sink _in_ again, and he lets the flavor of the steak burst on his tongue, rich and good. He _mmms_ quietly. For all Sam's more omnivorous than Dean, for all he cringes at the damages all the meat and fat and salt and crap does— _did_ —to Dean's arteries, there are few things in the world that beat a steak cooked medium-rare to perfection, tang of blood and sprinkle of peppercorns.

Dean comes back across from Sam after Sam swallows, groans so obscenely Sam shifts in his seat.

Halfway through the meal, a couple sit down at a table near them and spend half the time looking like they're more interested in eating each other's faces than their food.

It's pretty gross, but Dean keeps glancing over, and Sam—yeah, Sam misses kissing, in a way. Misses the press and slide of his lips against someone, the hot wet inside of someone's mouth. He wants to kiss Dean, _really_ wants to. When he looks at Dean, Dean's staring at Sam's mouth.

Their eyes catch and Dean looks away, looks back at Sam's mouth, then at the couple, and Sam swallows. A slow mix of heat, anticipation, apprehension, builds in Sam's chest, and he wants, wants, _wants_ to give Dean anything he can.

They're silent on the drive back, and back in the room the tension of the unspoken idea between them rises and presses in on Sam. He's not even sure if Dean's thinking what he is but it won't leave him alone, crashes around in his head.

It's easier than he thinks to get a hooker at short notice—he just uses the freaking phone book, badly disguised escort service in the back pages that take card payments upfront over the phone. Risky, he guesses, but it's not their money.

Dean doesn't say a word, doesn't stop him as Sam makes it clear what he's doing; Sam doesn't take the call outside, just catches Dean's eye as he gives his card details, heart thumping thick and nervous and excited in his chest.

"You sure she won't know?" he says when he puts the phone down.

Dean shakes his head, awkward jerky movement. "I swear. She won't know. I'll just—feel."

Sam pushes down the guilt. He's using her like any client, just using her for her body; it won't be any different for her than it would be if he were anyone, even if Sam's just—using her for Dean to feel it, to fuck Dean like he wants to so badly. She won't know, she won't. But he can't help jumping up nervously when the knock comes—taking her coat and smiling apologetically.

Dean disappeared, of course, the second she knocked, but Sam feels him close by, anticipation building.

"Hey, sugar," she says with a smile. She's not bad-looking, just a little worn around the edges—over-bleached hair, ridges of make-up in the light creases by her eyes, too much mascara clumped in her eyelashes. She has a kind smile, though, and a way of putting Sam at ease. "I'm Paula."

He goes to shake her hand, feels like an idiot when she smirks at him. "Er, sorry. Yeah, hi, my name's—Sam." He meant to give a fake name, but he feels he owes her this tiny bit of honesty. He lays her jacket over the back of the chair.

She pulls a pack of condoms from her jeans pocket. "How do you want to do this, hon? I'm up for most things but nothing like tying up, handcuffs and so on, you get?"

Sam grins, fidgets awkwardly with his shirt collar, makes himself stop. "Yeah, no, just—that's cool. Just—regular." As regular as this can _get_ , anyway, fucking a woman his disembodied brother is possessing, fuck.

He steps close, closes his eyes—when he can't see that Dean's not there, it's almost like he _is_ , senses him so strong it's like he's standing next to Sam—like the body giving off heat in front of him really is Dean. He runs his hand up her arm and pulls her gently closer.

He kisses her careful at first, just a press of lips, then deeper until the tang of lipstick is gone and he can just taste mouth and wet and warm. _Dean_ , he thinks, and he pushes her towards the bed, and she grabs sudden onto his arms as the backs of her knees bump into the mattress.

She lies back and Sam crawls over her, still gently kissing, opening her mouth with his tongue and feeling the ridges of her teeth, sucks on the soft fullness of her lip.

 _Dean_ , he thinks again, reaches out for him without moving, and he _feels_ the moment Dean sinks in all the way. Paula doesn't react underneath him, but Sam feels the shift deep inside him, like a jolt, a _give_ in his chest and he's touching _Dean_ , kissing him.

Sam can't help the flinch, jolting away and then pressing further into her. She hums low and he stretches himself out over her, and she doesn't complain as he holds on tighter, kisses more fiercely, drags his lips over her skin with his eyes squeezed shut and tongue darting out, thinks of the sensation traveling through to Dean as he licks her, scrapes his teeth lightly.

He's hard, and he presses his hips down, cock against her thigh. _Feel that, Dean_ , he wants to say, doesn't know if Dean can maybe hear him, get what he's thinking, or what— _feel my dick pressing into you. Gonna fuck you—_ and he leans up on an elbow to pull off her strappy red top. She moans as he bends to suck on her nipple, and he doesn't know if she's faking or not but god, he doesn't care, because the idea that Dean can feel this is so wrong and filthy and good his head feels like it can't hold everything in, like he's going to writhe right out of his skin with the dirty hot need rushing through him.

She doesn't speak, just makes low appreciative noises and helps him pull off his jeans, lifts her hips so he can tug her jeans off, knocks his shaking fingers out of the way to roll the condom on.

He sinks in, deep, deep, and it's _Dean_ all around him, Dean in the hot breath tickling his neck, Dean in the slick grip of her cunt around his cock. He knows Dean can feel this, feel every inch of his cock as he slams in, every shockwave of sensation; the stretch of her pussy, the bruising crash of his hips into hers, the pull of muscles as she spreads her legs further and cants her hips up into him, Dean's feeling it all.

Sam kisses her fiercely, feels her lips give against his teeth; the taste of her lipstick's long gone, the tang of her perfume lost in sweat and sex, and it's—almost, god, almost like—almost enough. He closes his eyes so tight that bright spirals burst behind his eyelids, swirling tunnels of color sinking down and his eyes ache and he wants Dean so bad he thinks he might die from it.

He comes into her, fingers tense in the sheets and face pressed against hers, eyes still shut tight, hips shoving deep in long thrusts as he pulses inside her, _inside Dean_. She comes, too, sounding almost surprised as she groans, clenching around him, fluttering with aftershocks, and Sam imagines the waves of orgasm wracking her body and how it's Dean coming, too, and his cock twitches with a desperate last spurt, tight in the full condom.

He pants, slowly pulls out. She moans slightly as his cock slips out, and Sam can't help but touch his fingers to her slick cunt, dip them in a little, thinks, _feel my fingers inside you, Dean? Skin on skin, in you._

She gets dressed quickly. "Thanks for that, sweetie," she says with a raised eyebrow and a smile as she tugs up her jeans, and Sam feels Dean leave her, drift across the room.

Sam grabs his wallet off the side and gives her a handful of bills.

"You already paid, love," she says, but he waves it at her.

"Take it," he says, "please. Just for—thanks."

She nods, pockets it.

At the door, she turns around. Her mascara's smeared and lips bland with her lipstick rubbed off, but she looks a hundred times more beautiful now than when she walked in, eyes soft and smile gentle, not seductive.

"Whoever it was you were fucking," she says, "I hope it helped you."

He frowns, feels a mix of worried and guilty, but she chuckles, dips her head.

"Don't worry about it, sugar, I'm used to it—ain't no-one sees me, and that's alright. It's how I keep sane, even. It's what I'm here for. " She nods again, hand on the doorknob. "Good luck."

Sam flops back on the bed, stretches his arms and legs out, the almost-sore, fucked-out ache still thrumming through him.

"So," he says, thinking there's probably something important he should say right now but no idea what the hell it is, "was it good for you?"

Dean appears slow in the middle of the room, passes a hand over his face, rubs quick at his eyes. It's strange to see him, to know that the face he can see wasn't the one he kissed.

"Jesus, dude," he says, voice sounding strange and underwater as his outline flickers. "I, uh. Yeah. Fuck."

He doesn't say anything else, but there's a whole mess of emotions somewhere between them. Sam feels kind of shaky all over, drained, not exactly in a bad way, but _fuck_. It was good, it was amazing, but it was almost too much—too intense, too strange. The presence of someone _else_ in something so new and powerful and private—Sam doesn't think he could do it often. He feels ripped open and raw every time with this thing with Dean; they needed to do this, and he's glad they did, but having someone else right there, pushing in on something so strong and important for them, even if she didn't know—he feels exhausted, wrecked. And on top of that he can't help the guilt—he's never liked using people, hated more than anything that dirty, violated feeling of the demon slipping into him and using his body without his permission, doing such horrendous things with it. And they _did_ use her, even more than she knew, and it's not fair. On her, on _Dean_ , even giving him a glimpse of what it's like, snatching it away.

He remembers, though, pushing in deep, knowing Dean felt it, every _inch_ , and he can't regret it.

\--

They don't talk much the next day, but it's not bad. Just feels like they both need a little time in their own heads.

"Should we head over into California, then?" Sam closes the laptop, shuffles his notes together, thinks he's got enough to go on for now, least till they know more when they get there.

Dean looks up, shimmering outline snapping back solid. "Yeah, I guess. You ready to do some hands-on investigating? Done with the boring type of research?"

Sam grins. "Not quite, but we may as well head over now, get into the area, get a base set up." He looks at Dean. "Could be a dangerous gig."

Dean nods, shrugs. "Yeah. You saved the world though, dude, I gotta start trusting you can take care of yourself." He doesn't look convinced. "I'll still kick your ass if you do anything stupid and get yourself hurt or worse, you know. Bobby'll help me, so you better be scared."

Sam can't stop the grin. "I'll try." He knows Dean can't really do a whole lot to protect him, but he's not all that worried, anyway—just having Dean around makes him feel a little safer, even if it's stupid. Can't break the habits of a lifetime, and knowing Dean'll be there to have his back is a pretty ingrained one at this point.

It feels weird that it _doesn't_ feel weird when they point the car towards California. The state has been an unspoken sore point in the Winchester family since it tore their family apart—at least Sam knows that's how Dad and Dean saw it. Always easier to direct anger and grief into hate for something inanimate that really didn't do anything to deserve it. Sam's picked up the learned avoidance of it since without even realizing, though the messy Madison business didn't do a whole lot to endear the state to either of them on top of everything else.

Point is, it feels like anything, now, just another road into another state. He glances at Dean as they pass a sign, and Dean's watching the road, unconcerned. He examines his own feelings, curiously, for any lingering grief or regret over the life he'd been planning there and how it was ripped away, but there's—nothing now, really. It's something so strongly rooted in their _old_ lives, before all this, that there's barely anything to relate it to _now_ ; to how Sam is, feels, _lives_ at the moment. Just the slightest strange pang, like the ache you get in an old break in the cold. Nothing that isn't easy to ignore, and looking at Dean next to him in the car—something he sometimes _still_ can't quite believe he got back—it's no more than the lightest of passing thoughts.

They stop over in Buckeye that night, in a motel with a bizarre hippo theme.

"Guess it's better than the expected cactuses," says Dean as he eyes the wallpaper.

"Cacti," says Sam absently.

"Bitch."

"Jerk." It's old, but Sam loves the way it makes Dean smile to himself.

Dean fades as soon as Sam flicks out the light that night. Sam can see him disappear, dark fuzzy outline blurring darker into the shadows, and the second Sam pushes back the covers to the bed Dean's surrounding him, pressing in all around like Sam's slipping underwater, Dean pushing up against him almost needy, like a cat. Sam grins at the thought and lets Dean settle around him, won't make the comparison with cuddling mainly because Dean would probably get pissed and fuck off elsewhere for the night and that's the last thing Sam wants right now.

He sighs, sleepy and contented, the last of the strangeness lingering from last night dropping away. Dean sinks into him, and Sam feels the strength of his emotions—almost scary, so close up against his own, and he knows Dean's trying to have a conversation with him he'd never force out in words; senses Dean's worry and hope and love and need and apology, more open than he's ever been with Sam, possibly more through accident than design when they're so closely entwined, but Sam tries to be the same.

"Yeah, I know," he says into the dark of the room, doesn't know how else to make sure he gets it across, "just you and me, right?" He blinks fast, and feels Dean try to draw away, try to wall up, but it doesn't really work; Sam can just feel his embarrassment and irritation along with everything else, and he laughs.

"Sorry," he says quietly, "gotcha." _Stay, Dean_ he adds silently, and Dean does, inside Sam. Sam doesn't even jerk off this time, just falls asleep with Dean.

It's almost terrifyingly intimate, and Sam's not surprised when Dean's way across the other side of the room the next morning when Sam wakes up. He's sort of relieved, himself; it was amazing but intense, and he needs his own headspace at least some of the time.

"Morning," he says.

"Hey. Back on the road?"

"Yep. Let me get packed up. We can maybe get outta Arizona today."

\--

Sam's driving, squinting against the sinking gold afternoon sun, when he realizes with a calm sort of certainty that he wants this, just as it is, forever, or however long he can.

He looks over at Dean, watches the sun glint on his skin, watches it gleam through him at the same time on the black leather.

"Hey," he says, and Dean firms up, opens his eyes.

"Hey," he says, sighs and rubs his eyes.

"So, uh. This whole thing. Us, or whatever."

Dean groans. "Do we have to talk about it?"

Sam ignores him. "I'm just saying. I'm not planning on going anywhere else, you know. This is pretty much it."

Dean's silent for a moment. "You sure, Sammy? There's still a lot out there for you. If you wanted. Something better than fucking—fucked up ghost incest."

Sam laughs. "I already said, Dean. I don't want. And isn't it totally appropriate for us? This is how we're happy."

Dean looks at him. "You are?"

"Yeah." Sam shrugs. "However I can have you. It makes sense, now, you know? It’s not like I want to be with anyone else," he says helplessly. "There’s not gonna be anyone but you. There never really has been. I don’t care. I need you with me for the long run, Dean, that's everything. And anything else is just a bonus. I just need you."

"Shut the fuck up, Sam, jeez," and Dean fades thin, hand over his face.

Sam grins. He touches his amulet almost unconsciously and he can just about see when Dean moves to watch the gesture.

It's true, though. It's just making sense of the way he can't even imagine being with anyone else, the way Dean's everything to him, the way he can't think of anything else he needs to complete him when Dean's wrapped around him, all over him, _in_ him. It seems fucking obvious, inevitable, when he looks back. They were always going to end up like this, no other way for it to go; Sam and Dean, in whatever way they can be. There was never going to be room for anyone else.

\--

"Lie down," says Dean when they get a room in Blythe, just into California. Sam steps backward towards the bed, eyes burning into Dean, and lies down, pulls off his clothes as Dean asks. His chest feels weird, like he can't get enough air, like this means more than anything else, for some crazy reason; like this is more _real_ than anything before.

His dick's hard, curving up big and it bumps against his stomach leaving cooling smears as he crunches up, knees towards his chest to grab at his jeans and tug them off. He smiles, sudden, throws them through Dean. "Ten points," he says.

"Bitch," says Dean with a small smirk and a roll of his eyes. He steps nearer, up onto the bed to kneel over Sam, and he's over Sam, face close, even as his knees don't leave dents in the duvet.

"Sam," he says, quiet and so fucking serious Sam can hardly keep looking at him, though he'd rather die than tear his eyes away.

"Yeah," Sam says back, and jumps as he feel pressure on his lips. Dean's pressing a finger to them.

Dean's still staring at him, way more in his eyes than Sam thinks he should be able to see but he understands it, every word Dean's not saying, stupid but necessary things like _yeah, alright_ and _forever_ and _love you_ and _thank you_.

"Dean," he says breathlessly, and the pressure against his lips disappears briefly, flickers back, as his lips move.

"Don't distract me, Sam," says Dean, and he drags that light touch over Sam's jaw, down his throat, leaving goosebumps prickling in the wake. Dean shifts back, touching slow all down Sam's chest, single light line of pressure, and that tiny touch has Sam so turned on he can hardly breathe—he wants to yell, sob, writhe, but he can't do anything but lie still and bite his lip, feel the breath whistle fast and faster through his nose as Dean goes lower, lower.

"Hey, Sammy," says Dean quietly, as the touch rasps gentle over the coarse hairs that start a little way under his bellybutton.

"Oh, god, god, Dean," says Sam frantically, neck craning forward, eyes flicking from Dean's face to where his fingers linger near Sam's straining cock. " _Dean_ —" and Dean wraps his hand around.

It doesn't feel like a hand, not really—he can't feel the rough-soft of skin, the heat of pumping blood, but it's pressure, real pressure all around, and it's _Dean_ and it's enough—oh, god, it's way more than enough, and his dick jerks once and he comes abruptly, toes curling and knees lifting just off the bed.

"Dean," he gasps again, and Dean flickers fast and sudden and disappears as splashes of warm come land on Sam's belly. Dean's wave of feeling crashes over him, that white-hot mix of love, want, desire, _Sam_ as filtered through _Dean_ , and it's familiar now and makes him groan.

"Told you," he says, breathing hard, "this is it. Everything."

\--

Bobby calls as Sam gets closer to L.A, as the traffic starts slowing down and Dean gets cranky. It's partly a little more information on the case, and partly to tell Sam he's heard from a friend who heard from an old contact that apparently there's a book out there that references an old ritual with some sister elements to necromancy but looks like it might have something to do with this sort of stuff—with the rehousing of resurrected souls, with links between body and soul.

Sam just nods. "Thanks, Bobby, keep me posted," he says, then flips the phone shut, but he doesn't say anything to Dean. If— _if_ —but he saw a hundred leads like this wash out into nothing when he was trying to break the deal the first time around, and he's learned to not spark off desperate hope. He doesn't need it, anyway.

Maybe part of him thinks _what if_ —maybe part of him heard something in Bobby's voice that sounded good, better than the weak attempts at optimism he'd gotten used to—maybe part of him thinks, _what if I get to touch Dean properly one day_ —but it doesn't take him over. Doesn't gnaw at the back of his mind so he spends more time trying not to hope than letting the hope flourish even as it burns. Just sits there, little warm idea saying _maybe_. If something works out, eventually, or if it doesn't, either way, he'll take things as they come. He's learned more than once—the hard way—to quit craning his neck to see ahead, around the corners he doesn't even know are coming, tripping over what's right there, stepping past things in front of him.

Dean sighs. "I hate L.A, man, I hope this demon gig is freaking worth it."

They pull forward a little in the traffic queuing to get off the freeway. Dean fades, then Sam can feel a touch _ghosting_ over the back of his neck, tickling jabs dipping under his collar, tiny tug on his hair.

"Quit it, Dean," he says with a grin, and he feels as if he'd just heard Dean's laugh; sometimes can't tell the difference anymore between hearing and seeing something from Dean and feeling it, knowing it.

Dean surrounds him, wraps around, sinks in, and Sam can feel him inside, smirks at how dirty it sounds. "You sure you wanna do that? All you're gonna feel and smell in L.A. is the pollution. And I'm not jerking off till we get off the road and inside somewhere, so get out."

He doesn't really want Dean to, though, likes it like this sometimes, feels a little like he's got Dean's hand in his, fingers wrapping gentle around. Of course, Dean would punch him for that comparison if he could, so he keeps it to himself. If he can't have Dean really inside him, in the _actually_ dirty way—this is pretty much a good enough substitute. Yeah, he misses things—the chance to feel Dean's lips against his, Dean's dick, Dean's hands truly on him—but he can deal with them. And things they do— _god_ , like nothing he ever expected or thought he would fucking need like air, it's everything he wants. It's Sam and Dean wrapped up and entwined and fucked-up and like nothing anyone else could even hope to understand.

Dean rises out, coalesces next to him again, frowns a little in concentration and nudges his knee against Sam's. "Bored."

"Yeah, yeah." He nudges back, and grins when Dean keeps solid enough for a brief touch.

He can deal. Either way. He's lucky. He smiles.

\--

THE END  



End file.
